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AND 


MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS 


OF 


T. NOON TALFOURD, 

U 

AUTHOR OF “ION.” 


®!)irb American (Ebition. 


WITH 


ADDITIONAL ARTICLES NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED 
IN THIS COUNTRY. 


BOSTON: 

PHILLIPS, SAMPSON, AND COMPANY. 

NEW YORK: JAMES C. DERBY. 

1854 . 





(/ < 
< l <• 



*v 









CONTENTS, 


Page 

On British Novels and Romances, Introductory to a Series of 


Criticisms on the Living Novelists.. 5 

New Monthly Magazine. 

Mackenzie. 8 

New Monthly Magazine. 

The Author of Waverley.11 

New Monthly Magazine. 

Godwin. 15 

Ne%v Monthly Magazine. • 

Maturin. 18 

New Monthly Magazine. 

Rymer on Tragedy . 21 

Retrospective Review. 

Colley Cibber’s Apology for his Life . 28 

Retrospective Review. 

John Dennis’s Works.35 

Retrospective Review. 

Modern Periodical Literature.43 

New Monthly Magazine. 

On the Genius and Writings of Wordsworth.47 

New Monthly Magazine. 

North’s Life of Lord Guilford . 59 

Retrospective Review. 

Hazlitt’s Lectures on the Drama ..68 

Edinburgh Review. 


Wallace’s Prospects of Mankind, Nature, and Providence . . 73 


Retrospective Review. 

On Pulpit Oratory. 83 

London Magazine. 

Recollections of Lisbon. 87 

New Monthly Magazine. 

Lloyd’s Poems. 94 

London Magazine. 


Mr. Oldaker on Modern Improvements . . . 98 

New Monthly Magazine. 

iii 























iv CONTENTS. 

Page 

A Chapter on “ Time” . . .. 101 

New Monthly Magazine. 

On the Profession of the Bar .. 104 

London Magazine. 

The Wine Cellar... 113 

New Monthly Magazine. 

Destruction of the Brunswick Theatre by Fire.110 

New Monthly Magazine. 

First Appearance of Miss Fanny Kemble.117 

New Monthly Magazine. 

1 * 

The Melo-Dramas against Gambling.110 

New Monthly Magazine. 

On the Intellectual Character of the late William Hazlitt 121 
The' Examiner. 

The late Dowager Lady Holland ..131 

Morning Chronicle. 

Address at the Anniversary of the Manchester Athenaeum . 132 

Manchester Guardian, October 25, 1845. 

9 

Lord Eld£>n and Lord Stowell.‘ 137 

Quarterly Review. 

Speech for the Defendant in the Prosecution of the Oueen v. 

Moxon, for the Publication of Shelley’s Works.148 

Delivered in the Court of Queen’s Bench, June 23, 1841. 

Speech on the Motion for leave to bring in a Bill to amend the 

Law of Copyright.159 

Delivered in the House of Commons, Thursday, May 18, 1837. 

Speech on the Motion for the Second Reading of the Bill to 

amend the Law of Copyright.165 

Delivered in the House of Commons, Wednesday, April 25, 1838. 

Speech on Moving the Second Reading of a Bill to amend the 
Law of Copyright.171 

Delivered in the House of Commons, Thursday, February 28, 1839. 

The Westminster Play .176 

December 1845. 













TALFOURD'S MISCELLANIES. 


ON BRITISH NOVELS AND ROMANCES, INTRODUCTORY TO A 
SERIES OF CRITICISMS ON THE LIVING NOVELISTS. 

[New Monthly Magazine.] 


We regard the authors of the best novels 
and romances as among the truest benefactors 
of their species. Their works have often con¬ 
veyed, in the most attractive form, lessons of 
the most genial wisdom. But we do not prize 
them so much in reference to their immediate 
aim, or any individual traits of nobleness with 
which they may inform the thoughts, as for 
their general tendency to break up that cold 
and debasing selfishness with which the souls 
of so large a portion of mankind are encrusted. 
They give to a vast class, who by no means 
would be c^rrisd beyond the most contracted 
range of emotion, an interest in things out of 
themselves, and a perception of grandeur and 
of beauty, of which otherwise they might ever 
have lived unconscious. Pity for fictitious suf¬ 
ferings is, indeed, very inferior to that sympa¬ 
thy with the universal heart of man which 
inspires real self-sacrifice; but it is better even 
to be moved by its tenderness, than wholly to be 
ignorant of the joy of natural tears. How 
many are there for whom poesy has no charm, 
and who have derived only from romances 
those glimpses of disinterested heroism and 
ideal beauty, which alone “ make them less for¬ 
lorn,” in their busy career! The good house¬ 
wife, who is employed all her life in the seve¬ 
rest drudgery, has yet some glimmerings of a 
state and dignity above her station and age, 
and some dim vision of meek, angelic suffer¬ 
ing, when she thinks of the well-thumbed vo¬ 
lume of Clarissa Harlowe, which she found, 
when a girl, in some old recess, and read, with 
breathless eagerness, at stolen times and mo¬ 
ments of hasty joy. The careworn lawyer or 
politician, encircled with all kinds of petty 
anxieties, thinks of the Arabian Nights Enter¬ 
tainments, which he devoured in his joyful 
school-days, and is once more jmung, and in-! 
nocent, and happy. If the sternest puritan were 
acquainted with Parson Adams, or with Dr. 
Primrose, he could not hate the clergy. If 
novels are not the deepest teachers of hu¬ 
manity, they have, at least, the widest range. 
They lend to genius “ lighter wings to fly.” 
They are read where Milton and Shakspeare 
are only talked of, and where even their names 
are never heard. They nestle gently beneath 
the covers of unconscious sofas, are read by 


fair and glistening eyes in moments snatched 
from repose, and beneath counters and shop- 
boards minister delights “secret, sweet, and 
precious.” It is possible that, in particular 
instances,their effects maybe baneful; but,on 
the whole, we are persuaded they are good. 
The world is not in danger of becoming too 
romantic. The golden threads of poesy are not 
too thickly or too closely intenvoven with the 
ordinary web of existence. Sympathy is the 
first great lesson w'hich man should learn. It 
will be ill for him if he proceeds no farther; if 
his emotions are but excited to roll back on his 
heart, and to be fostered in luxurious quiet. 
But unless he learns to feel for things in which 
he has no personal interest, he can achieve 
nothing generous or noble. This lesson is in 
reality the universal moral of all excellent ro¬ 
mances. How r mistaken are those miserable 
reasoners who object to them as giving “false 
pictures of life—of purity too glossy and ethe¬ 
real—of friendship too deep and* confiding—of 
love w r hich does not shrink at the approach of 
ill, but looks on tempests and is never shaken,” 
because with these the world too rarely blos¬ 
soms ! Were these things visionary and un¬ 
real, w r ho would break the spell, and bid the de¬ 
licious enchantment vanish I The soul will 
not be the worse for thinking too well of its 
kind, or believing that the highest excellence 
is within the reach of its exertions. But these 
things are not unreal; they are shadows, in¬ 
deed, in themselves ; but they are shadows cast 
from objects stately and eternal. Man can 
never imagine that wdiichhas no foundation in 
his nature. The virtues he conceives are not 
the mere pageantry of his thought. We feel 
their truth—not their historic or individual 
truth—but their universal truth, as reflexes of 
human energy and power. It would be enough 
for us to prove that the imaginative glories 
wrhich are shed around our being, are far 
brighter than “ the light of common day,” which 
mere vulgar experience in the course of the 
world diffuses. But, in truth, that radiance is 
not merely of the fancy, nor are its influences 
lost w r hen it ceases immediately to shine on 
our path. It is holy and prophetic. The best 
joys of childhood—its boundless aspirations 
and gorgeous dreams, are the sure indications 
a 2 5 





TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


of the nobleness of its final heritage. All the 
softenings of evil to the moral vision by the 
gentleness of fancy, are proofs that evil itself 
shall perish. Our yearnings after ideal beauty 
show that the home of the soul which feels 
them, is in a lovelier world. And when man 
describes high virtues, and instances of no¬ 
bleness, which rarely light on earth; so sub¬ 
lime that they expand our imaginations beyond 
their former compass, yet so human that they 
make our hearts gush with delight; he disco¬ 
vers feelings in his own breast, and awakens 
sympathies in ours, which shall assuredly one 
day have real and stable objects to rest on ! 

The early times of England—unlike those of 
Spain—were not rich in chivalrous romances. 
The imagination seems to have been chilled 
by the manners of the Norman conquerors. 
The domestic contests for the disputed throne, 
with their intrigues, battles, and executions, 
have none of that rich, poetical interest, which 
attended the struggles for the Holy Sepulchre. 
Nor, in the golden age of English genius, were 
there any very remarkable works of pure fic¬ 
tion. Since that period to the present day, 
however, there has been a rich succession of 
novels and romances, each increasing the 
stores of innocent delight, and shedding on hu¬ 
man life some new tint of tender colouring. 

The novels of Richardson are at once 
among the grandest and the most singular crea¬ 
tions of human genius. They combine an ac¬ 
curate acquaintance with the freest libertinism, 
and the sternest professions of virtue—a sport¬ 
ing with vicious casuistry, and the deepest 
horror of free-thinking—the most stately ideas 
of paternal authority, and the most elaborate 
display of its abuses. Prim and stiff, almost 
without parallel, the author perpetually treads 
on the very borders of indecorum, but with a 
solemn and assured step, as if certain that he 
could never fall. “The precise, strait-laced 
Richardson,” says Mr. Lamb in one of the pro¬ 
found and beautiful notes to his specimens, 
“has strengthened vice from the mouth of 
Lovelace, with entangling sophistries, and ab¬ 
struse pleas against her adversary virtue, 
which Sedley, Yilliers, and Rochester wanted 
depth of libertinism sufficient to have invent¬ 
ed.” He had, in fact, the power of making any 
set of notions, however fantastical, appear as 
“truths of holy writ,” to his readers. This he 
did by the authority with which he disposed of 
all things, and by the infinite minuteness of his 
details. His gradations are so gentle, that we 
do not at any one point hesitate to follow him, 
and should descend with him to any depth 
before we perceived that our path had been 
unequal. By the means of this strange magic, 
we become anxious for the marriage of Pa¬ 
mela with her base master; because the author 
has so imperceptibly wrought on us the belief 
of an^wful distance between the rights of an 
esquire and his servant, that our imaginations 
regard it in the place of all moral distinctions. 
After all, the general impression made on us 
by his works is virtuous. Clementina is to 
the soul a new and majestic image, inspired by 
virtue and by love, which raises and refines its 
conceptions. She has all the depth and in¬ 
tensity of the Italian character, with all the 


purity of an angel. She is at the same time 
one of the grandest of tragic heroines, and the 
divinest of religions enthusiasts. Clarissa 
alone is above her. Clementina steps statelily 
in her very madness, amidst “the pride,pomp, 
and circumstance” of Italian nobility ; Clarissa 
is triumphant, though violated, deserted, and 
encompassed by vice and infamy. Never can 
we forget that amazing scene, in which, on the 
effort of her mean seducer to renew his out¬ 
rages, she appears in all the radiance of men¬ 
tal purity, among the wretches assembled to 
witness his triumph, where she startles them by 
her first appearance, as by a vision from 
above ; and holding the penknife to her breast, 
with her eyes lifted to heaven, prepares to die, 
if her craven destroyer advances, striking the 
vilest with deep awe of goodness, and walk¬ 
ing placidly, at last, from the circle of her foes, 
none of them daring to harm her! How pa¬ 
thetic, above all other pathos in the world, are 
those snatches of meditation which she com¬ 
mits to the paper, in the first delirium of her 
wo ! How delicately imagined are her prepa¬ 
rations for that grave in which alone she can 
find repose ! Cold must be the hearts of those 
who can conceive them as too elaborate, or 
who can venture to criticise them. In this 
novel all appears most real; we feel enve¬ 
loped, like Don Quixote, by a thousand 
threads; and like him, would we rather re¬ 
main so for ever, than break one of their silken 
fibres. Clarissa Harlowe is one of the books 
which leave us different beings .from those 
which they find us. “ Sadder and wiser” do 
we arise from its perusal. 

Yet when we read Fielding’s novels after 
those of Richardson, we feel as if a stupen¬ 
dous pressure were removed from our souls. 
We seem suddenly to have left a palace of 
enchantment, where we have past through 
long galleries filled with the most gorgeous 
images, and illumined by a light not quite 
human nor yet quite divine, into the fresh air, 
and the common ways of this “bright and 
breathing world.” We travel on the high 
road of humanity, yet meet in it pleasanter 
companions, and catch more delicious snatches 
of refreshment, than ever we can hope else¬ 
where to enjoy. The mock heroic of Field¬ 
ing, when he condescends to that ambiguous 
style, is scarcely less pleasing than its stately 
prototype. It is a sort of spirited defiance to 
fiction, on the behalf of reality, by one who 
knew full well all the strongholds of that 
nature which he was defending. There is not 
in Fielding much of that which can properly 
be called ideal—if we except the character of 
Parson Adams; but his works represent life 
as more delightful than it seems to common 
experience, by disclosing those of its dear im¬ 
munities, which we little think of, even when 
we enjoy them. How delicious are all his re¬ 
freshments at all his inns! How vivid are 
the transient joys of his heroes, in their 
checkered course—how full and overflowing 
are their final raptures! His Tom Jones is 
quite unrivalled in plot, and is to be rivalled 
only in his own works for felicitous deline¬ 
ation of character. The little which we have 
told us of All worthy, especially that which re- 




ON BRITISH NOVELS AND ROMANCES. 


7 


lates to his feelings respecting his deceased 
wife, makes us feel for him, as for one of the 
best and most revered friends of our child¬ 
hood. Was ever the “soul of goodness in 
things evil” better disclosed, than in the 
scruples and the dishonesty of Black George, 
that tenderest of gamekeepers, and truest of 
thieves l Did ever health, good-humour, frank¬ 
heartedness, and animal spirits hold out so 
freshly against vice and fortune as in the 
hero ? Was ever so plausible a hypocrite as 
Blifil, who buys a Bible of Tom Jones so de¬ 
lightfully, and who, by his admirable imitation 
of virtue, leaves it almost in doubt, whether, 
by a counterfeit so dexterous, he did not merit 
some share of her rewards 1 Who shall gain¬ 
say the cherry lips of Sophia Western! The 
story of Lady Bellaston we confess to be a 
blemish. But if there be any vice left in the 
work, the fresh atmosphere diffused over all 
its scenes, will render it innoxious. Joseph 
Andrews has far less merit as a story—but it 
depicts Parson Adams, whom it does the heart 
good to think on. He who drew this cha¬ 
racter, if he had done nothing else, would not 
have lived in vain. We fancy we can see 
him with his torn cassock, (in honour of his 
high profession,) his volumes of sermons, 
which we really wish had been printed, and 
his ^Eschylus, the best of all the editions of 
that sublime tragedian! Whether he longs 
after his own sermons against vanity—or is 
absorbed in the romantic tale of the fair Leo¬ 
nora—or uses his ox-like fists in defence of 
the fairer Fanny, he equally imbodies in his 
person, “ the homely beauty of the good old 
cause,” of high thoughts, pure imaginations, 
and manners unspotted by the world. 

Smollet seems to have had more touch of 
romance than Fielding, but not so profound 
and intuitive a knowledge of humanity’s hid¬ 
den treasures. There is nothing in his works 
comparable to Parson Adams; but then, on 
the other hand, Fielding has not any thing of 
the kind equal to Strap. Partridge is dry, and 
hard, compared with this poor barber-boy, 
with his generous overflowings of affection. 
Roderick Random, indeed, with its varied de¬ 
lineation of life, is almost a romance. Its 
hero is worthy of his name. He is the sport 
of fortune rolled about through the “ many 
■ways of wretchedness,” almost without re¬ 
sistance, but ever catching those tastes of joy 
which are everywhere to be relished by those 
who are willing to receive them. We seem 
to roll on with him, and get delectably giddy 
in his company. 

The humanity of the Vicar of Wakefield is 
less deep than that of Roderick Random, but 
sweeter tinges of fancy are cast over it. The 
sphere in which Goldsmith’s powers moved 
was never very extensive, but within it he 
discovered all that was good, and shed on it 
the tenderest lights of his sympathizing ge¬ 
nius. No one ever excelled so much as he in 
depicting amiable follies and endearing weak¬ 
nesses. His satire makes us at once smile at 
and love all that he so tenderly ridicules. 
The good Vicar’s trust in Monogamy, his 
son’s purchase of the spectacles, his own sale 
of his horse to his solemn admirer at the 


fair; the blameless vanities of his daughters, 
and his resignation under his accumulated 
sorrows, are among the best treasures of me¬ 
mory. The pastoral scenes in this exquisite 
tale are the sweetest in the world. The scents 
of the hay-field, and of the blossoming hedge¬ 
rows, seem to come freshly to our senses. 
The whole romance is a tenderly-coloured 
picture, in little, of human nature’s most 
genial qualities. 

De Foe is one of the most extraordinary of 
English authors. His Robinson Crusoe is 
deservedly one of the most popular of novels. 

It is usually the first read, and always among 
the last forgotten. The interest of its scenes 
in the uninhabited island is altogether pe¬ 
culiar; since there is nothing to develope the 
character but deep solitude. Man, there, is 
alone in the world, and can hold communion 
only with nature, and nature’s God. There is 
nearly the same situation in Philoctetes, that 
sweetest of the Greek tragedies; but there we 
only see the poor exile as he is about to leave - 
his sad abode, to which he has become at¬ 
tached, even with a child-like cleaving. In 
Robinson Crusoe, life is stripped of all its 
social joys, yet we feel how worthy of cherish¬ 
ing it is, with nothing but silent nature to 
cheer it. Thus are nature and the soul, left 
with no other solace, represented in their 
native grandeur and intense communion. 
With how fond an interest do we dwell on 
all the exertions of our fellow-man, cut off 
from his kind; watch his growing plantations 
as they rise, and seem to water them with our 
tears ! The exceeding vividness of all the 
descriptions are more delightful when com¬ 
bined with the loneliness and distance of the 
scene “placed far amid the melancholy main” 
in which we become dwellers. We have 
grown so familiar with the solitude, that the 
print of man’s foot seen in the sand seems to 
appal us as an awful thing !—The Family In¬ 
structor of this author, in which he inculcates 
weightily his own notions of puritanical de¬ 
meanour and parental authority, is very 
curious. It is a strange mixture of narrative 
and dialogue, fanaticism and nature; but all 
done with such earnestness that the sense of 
its reality never quits us. Nothing, however, 
can be more harsh and unpleasing than the 
impression which it leaves. It does injustice 
both to religion and the world. It represents 
the innocent pleasures of the latter as deadly 
sins, and the former as most gloomy, austere, 
and exclusive. One lady resolves on poison¬ 
ing her husband, and another determines to 
go to the play, and the author treats both 
offences with a severity nearly equal! 

Far different from this ascetic novel is that 
best of religious romances, the Fool of Quality. 
The piety there is at once most deep and most 
benign. There is much, indeed, of eloquent 
mysticism, but all evidently most heartfelt 
and sincere. The yearnings of the soul after 
universal good and intimate communion with 
the divine nature were never more nobly 
shown. The author is most prodigal of his 
intellectual wealth—“his bounty is as bound¬ 
less as the sea, his love as deep.” He gives 
to his chief characters riches endless as the 






8 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


spiritual stores of his own heart. It is, indeed, 
only the last which gives value to the first in 
his writings. It is easy to endow men with 
millions on paper, and to make them willing 
to scatter them among the wretched; but it is 
the corresponding bounty and exuberance of 
the author’s soul, which here makes the mo¬ 
ney sterling, and the charity divine. The 
hero of this romance always appears to our 
imagination like a radiant vision encircled 
with celestial glories. The stories introduced 
in it are delightful exceptions to the usual rule 
by which such incidental tales are properly 
regarded as impertinent intrusions. That of 
David Doubtful is of the most romantic in¬ 
terest, and at the same time steeped in feeling 
the most profound. But that of Clement and 
his wife is perhaps the finest. The scene in 
which they are discovered, having placidly 
lain down to die of hunger together, in gentle 
submission to Heaven, depicts a quiescence 
the most sublime, yet the most affecting. No¬ 
thing can be more delightful than the sweeten¬ 
ing ingredients in their cup of sorrow. The 
heroic act of the lady to free herself from her 
ravisher’s grasp, her trial and her triumphant 
acquittal, have a grandeur above that of 
tragedy. The genial spirit of the author’s 
faith leads him to exult especially in the re¬ 
pentance of the wicked. No human writer 
seems ever to have hailed the contrite with so 
cordial a welcome. His scenes appear over¬ 
spread with a rich atmosphere of tenderness, 
which softens and consecrates all things. 

We would not pass over, without a tribute 


of gratitude, Mrs. Radcliffe’s wild and won¬ 
drous tales. When we read them, the world 
seems shut out, and we breathe only in an en¬ 
chanted region, where lover’s lutes tremble 
over placid waters, mouldering castles rise 
conscious of deeds of blood, and the sad voices 
of the past echo through deep vaults and lonely 
galleries. There is always majesty in her ter¬ 
rors. She produces more effect by whispers 
and slender hints than ever was attained by 
the most vivid display of horrors. Her con¬ 
clusions are tame and impotent almost without 
example. But while her spells actually ope¬ 
rate, her power is truly magical. Who can 
ever forget the scene in the Romance of the 
Forest, where the marquis, who has long 
sought to make the heroine the victim of licen¬ 
tious love, after working on her protector, over 
whom he has a mysterious influence, to steal 
at night into her chamber, and when his trem¬ 
bling listener expects only a requisition for 
delivering her into his hands, replies to the 
question of “ then—to-night, my Lord!” “Ade¬ 
laide dies”—or the allusions to the dark veil in 
the Mysteries of Udolpho—or the stupendous 
scenes in Spalatro’s cottage? Of all romance 
writers Mrs. Radcliffe is the most romantic. 

The present age has produced a singular 
number of authors of delightful prose fiction, 
on whom we intend to give a series of criti¬ 
cisms. We shall begin with Mackenzie, 
whom we shall endeavour to compare with 
Sterne, and for this reason we have passed 
over the works of the latter in our present cur¬ 
sory view of the novelists of other days. 


MACKENZIE. 

[New Monthly Magazine.] 


Although our veneration for Mackenzie has j 
induced us to commence this series of articles 
with an attempt to express our sense of his 
genius, we scarcely know how to criticise its 
exquisite creations. The feelings which they 
have awakened within us are too old and too 
sacred almost for expression. We scarcely 
dare to scrutinize with a critic’s ear, the blend¬ 
ing notes of that sad and soft music of human¬ 
ity which they breathe. We feel as if there 
were a kind of privacy in our sympathies with 
them—as though they were a part of ourselves, 
which strangers knew not—and as if in pub¬ 
licly expressing them, we were violating the 
sanctities of our own souls. We must recol¬ 
lect, however, that our readers know them as 
well as we do, and then to dwell with them 
tenderly on their merits will seem like dis¬ 
coursing of the long-cherished memories of 
friends we had in common, and of sorrows 
participated in childhood. 

The purely sentimental style in which the 
tales of Mackenzie are written, though deeply 
felt by the people, has seldom met with due 


I appreciation from the critics. It has its own 
genuine and peculiar beauties, which we love 
the more the longer we feel them. Its conse¬ 
crations are altogether drawn from the soul. 
The gentle tinges which it casts on human life 
are shed, not from the imagination or the fancy, 
but from the affections. It represents, indeed, 
humanity as more tender, its sorrows as more 
gentle, its joys as more abundant than they 
appear to common observers. But this is not 
effected by those influences of the imagination 
which consecrate whatever they touch, which 
detect the secret analogies of beauty, and bring 
kindred graces from all parts of nature to 
heighten the images which they reveal. It 
affects us rather by casting off from the soul 
those impurities and littlenesses which it con¬ 
tracts in the world, than by foreign aids. It 
appeals to those simple emotions which are 
not the high prerogatives of genius, but which 
are common to all who are “made of one 
blood,” and partake in one primal sympathy. 
The holiest feelings, after all, are those which 
would be the most common if gross selfish 





MACKENZIE. 


9 


ness and low ambition froze not “the genial 
current of the soul.” The meanest and most 
ungifted have their gentle remembrances of 
early days. Love has tinged the life of the 
artisan and the cottager with something of the 
romantic. The course of none has been along 
so beaten a road that they remember not fondly 
some resting-places in their journeys; some 
turns of their path in which lovely prospects 
broke in upon them; some soft plats of green 
refreshing to their weary feet. Confiding love, 
generous friendship, disinterested humanity, 
require no recondite learning, no high imagi¬ 
nation, to enable an honest heart to appreciate 
and feel them. Too often, indeed, are the sim¬ 
plicities of nature and the native tendernesses 
of the soul nipped and chilled by those anxie¬ 
ties which lie on them “ like an untimely frost.” 
“The world is too much with us.” We be¬ 
come lawyers, politicians, merchants, and for¬ 
get that we are men, and sink in our transitory 
vocations that character which is to last for 
ever. A tale of sentiment—such as those of 
that honoured veteran whose works we would 
now particularly remember—awakens all these 
pulses of sympathy with our kind, of whose 
beatings we had become almost unconscious. 
It does honour to humanity by stripping off its 
artificial disguises. Its magic is not like that 
by which Arabian enchanters raised up glit¬ 
tering spires, domes, and palaces by a few ca¬ 
balistic words; but resembles their power to 
disclose veins of precious ore where all seemed 
sterile and blasted. It gently puts aside the 
brambles which overcast the stream of life, 
and lays it open to the reflections of those deli¬ 
cate clouds which lie above it in the heavens. 

„ It shows to us the soft undercourses of feeling, 
which neither time nor circumstances can 
wholly stop; and the depth of affection in the 
soul, which nothing but sentiment itself can 
fathom. It disposes us to pensive thought— 
expands the sympathies—and makes all the 
half-forgotten delights of youth “ come back 
upon our hearts again,” to soften and to 
cheer us. 

Too often has the sentiment of which we 
have spoken been confounded with sickly af¬ 
fectations in a common censure. But no things 
can be more opposite than the paradoxes of 
the inferior order of German sentimentalists 
and the works of a writer like Mackenzie. 
Real sentiment is the truest, the most genuine, 
and the most lasting thing on earth. It is more 
ancient as well as more certain in its opera¬ 
tions than the reasoning faculties. We know 
and feel before we think; we perceive before 
we compare; we enjoy before we believe. As 
the evidence of sense is stronger than that of 
testimony, so the light of our inward eye more 
truly shows to us the secrets of the heart than 
the most elaborate process of reason. Riches, 
honours, power, are transitory — the things 
which appear, pass away—the shadows of life 
alone are stable and unchanging. Of the re¬ 
collections of infancy nothing can deprive us. 
Love endures, even if its object perishes, and 
nurtures the soul of the mourner. Sentiment 
has a kind of divine alchymy, rendering grief 
itself the source of tenderest thoughts and far- 
reaching desires, which the sufferer cherishes 


as sacred treasures. The sorrows over which 
it sheds its influence are “ill-bartered for the 
garishness of joy;” for they win us softly from 
life, and fit us to die smiling. It endures, not 
only while fortune changes, but while opinions 
vary, which the young enthusiast fondly hoped 
would never forsake him. It remains when 
the unsubstantial pageants of goodliest hope 
vanish. It binds the veteran to the child by 
ties which no fluctuations even of belief can 
alter. It preserves the only identity, save that 
of consciousness, which man with certainty 
retains—connecting our past with our present 
being by delicate ties, so subtle that they vi¬ 
brate to every breeze of feeling; yet so strong 
that the tempests of life have not power to 
break them. It assures us that what we have 
been we shall be, and that our human hearts 
shall vibrate with their first sympathies while 
the species shall endure. 

We think that, on the whole, Mackenzie is 
the first master of this delicious style. Sterne, 
doubtless, has deeper touches of humanity in 
some of his works. But there is no sustained 
feeling—no continuity of emotion—no extend¬ 
ed range Qf thought, over which the mind can 
brood in his ingenious and fantastical writings. 
His spirit is far too mercurial and airy to suffer 
him tenderly to linger over those images of 
sweet humanity which he discloses. His cle¬ 
verness breaks the charm which his feeling 
spreads, as by magic, around us. His exqui¬ 
site sensibility is ever counteracted by his per¬ 
ceptions of the ludicrous, and his ambition 
after the strange. No harmonious feeling 
breathes from any of his pieces. He sweeps 
“ that curious instrument, the human heart,” 
with hurried fingers, calling forth in rapid 
succession its deepest and its liveliest tones, 
and making only marvellous discord. His 
pathos is, indeed, most genuine while it lasts; 
but the soul is not suffered to cherish the feel¬ 
ing which it awakens. He does not shed, like 
Mackenzie, one mild light on the path of life; 
but scatters on it wild coruscations of ever- 
shifting brightness, which, while they some¬ 
times disclose spots of inimitable beauty, 
often do but fantastically play over objects 
dreary and revolting. All in Mackenzie is 
calm, gentle, harmonious. No play of mis¬ 
timed wit, no flourish of rhetoric, no train of 
philosophical speculation, for a moment di¬ 
verts our sympathy. Each of his best works 
is like one deep thought, and the impression 
which it leaves, soft, sweet, and undivided as 
the summer evening’s holiest and latest sigh. 

The only exception which we can make to 
this character, is the Man of the World. Here 
the attempt to obtain intricacy of plot disturbs 
the emotion which, in the other works of the 
author, is so harmoniously excited. A tale of 
sentiment should be most simple. Its whole 
•effect depends on its keeping the tenor of its 
predominant feeling unbroken. Another de¬ 
fect in this story is, the length of time over 
which it spreads its narrative. Sindall, alone, 
connects the two generations which it em¬ 
braces, and he is too mean and uninteresting 
thus to appear both as the hero and the chorus. 
When a story is thus continued from a mother 
to a daughter, it seems to have no legitimat® 



10 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


boundary. The painful remembrances of the 
former interferes with our interest for the 
latter, and the present difficulties of the last 
deprive us of those emotions of fond retro¬ 
spection, which the fate of the first would 
otherwise awaken. Still there are in this tale 
scenes of pathos delicious as any which even 
the author himself has drawn. The tender 
pleasure which the Man of Feeling excites is 
wholly without alloy. Its hero is the most 
beautiful personification of gentleness, pa¬ 
tience, and meek sufferings, which the heart 
can conceive. Julia de Roubigne, however, is, 
on the whole, the most delightful of the au¬ 
thor’s works. There is, in this tale, enough of 
plot to keep alive curiosity, and sharpen the 
interest which the sentiment awakens, without 
any of ihose strange turns and perplexing 
incidents which break the current of sympa¬ 
thy. The diction is in perfect harmony with 
the subject—“most musical, most melan¬ 
choly”—with “golden cadences” responsive 
to the thoughts. There is a plaintive charm 
in the image presented to us of the heroine, 
too fair almost to dwell on. How exquisite is 
the description given of her by her,maid, in a 
letter to her friend, relating to her fatal mar¬ 
riage:—“She was dressed in a white muslin 
night-gown, with striped lilac and white 
ribands; her hair was kept in the loose way 
you used to make me dress it for her at Bei- 
ville, with two waving curls down one side 
of her neck, and a braid of little pearls. And 
to be sure, with her dark, brown locks resting 
upon it, her bosom looked as pure white as 
the driven snow. And then her eyes, when 
she gave her hand to the count! they were 
cast down, and you might see her eyelashes, 
like strokes of a pencil, over the white of her 
skin—the modest gentleness, with a sort of 
sadness too, as it were, and a gentle heave of 
her bosom at the same time.” And yet, such 
is the feeling communicated to us by the 
whole work, that we are ready to believe even 
this artless picture an inadequate representa¬ 
tion of that beauty which we never cease to 
feel. How natural and tear-moving is the 
letter of Savillon to his friend, describing the 
scenes of his early love, and recalling, v r ith 
intense vividness, all the little circumstances 
which aided its progress! What an idea, in 
a single expression, does Julia give of the 
depth and the tenderness of her affection, 
when describing herself as taking lessons in 
drawing from her lover, sne says that she felt 
something from the touch of his hand “not 
the less delightful from carrying a sort of fear 
along with that delight: it was like a pulse in 
thf souir The last scenes of this novel are 


matchless in their kind. Never was so much 
of the terrific alleviated by so much of the 
pitiful. The incidents are most tragic; yet 
over them is diffused a breath of sweetness, 
which softens away half their anguish, and 
reconciles us to that which remains. Our 
minds are prepared, long before, for the early 
nipping of that delicate blossom, for which 
this world was too bleak. Julia’s last inter¬ 
view with Savillon mitigates her doom, partly 
by the joy her heart has tasted, and which 
nothing afterwards in life could equal, and 
partly by the certainty that she must either 
become guilty or continue wretched. Nothing 
can be at once sweeter and more affecting 
than her ecstatic dream after she has taken 
the fatal mixture, her seraphical playing on 
the organ, to which the waiting angels seem 
to listen, and her tranquil recalling the scenes 
of peaceful happiness with her friend, as she 
imagines her arms about her neck, and fancies 
that her Maria’s tears are falling on her bo¬ 
som. Then comes Montaubon’s description 
of her as she drank the poison :—“ She took 
it from me smiling, and her look seemed to 
lose its confusion. She drank my health! 
She was dressed in her white silk bed-gown, 
ornamented with pale, pink ribands. Her 
cheek was gently flushed from their reflection ; 
her blue eyes were turned upwards as she 
drank, and a dark-brown ringlet lay on her 
shoulder.” We do not think even the fate ot 
“ the gentle lady married to the Moor” calls 
forth tears so sweet as those which fall for the 
Julia of Mackenzie! 

We rejoice to know and feel that these 
delicious tales cannot perish. Since the)' 
were written,-indeed, the national imagination 
has been, in a great degree, perverted by 
strong excitements, and “fed on poisons till 
they have become a kind of nutriment.” But 
the quiet and unpresuming beauties of these 
works depend not on the fashion of the world. 
They cannot be out of date till the dreams of 
young imagination shall vanish, and the 
deepest sympathies of love and hope shall be 
chilled for ever. While other works are ex¬ 
tolled, admired, and reviewed, these will be 
loved and wept over. Their author, in the 
evening of his days, may truly feel that he 
has not lived in vain. Gentle hearts shall 
ever blend their thought of him among their 
remembrances of the benefactors of their 
youth. And when the fever of the world 
“ shall hang upon the beatings of their hearts,” 
how often will their spirits turn to him, who, 
as he cast a soft seriousness over the morning 
of life, shall assist in tranquillizing its noon 
tide sorrows! 



THE AUTHOR OF WAVERLEY. 


11 


“THE AUTHOR OF WAVERLEY.” 

Here are we in a bright and breathing world.— Wordsworth. 


[New Monthly Magazine.] 


We esteem the productions which the great 
novelist of Scotland has poured forth with 
startling speed from his rich treasury, not 
only as multiplying the sources of delight to 
thousands, but as shedding the most genial 
influences on the taste and feeling of the peo¬ 
ple. These, with their fresh spirit of health, 
have counteracted the workings of that blast¬ 
ing spell by which the genius of Lord Byron 
once threatened strangely to fascinate and de¬ 
base the vast multitude of English readers. 
Men, seduced by their noble poet, had begun 
to pay homage to mere energy, to regard vir¬ 
tue as low and mean compared with lofty 
crime, and to think that high passion carried 
in itself a justification for its most fearful ex¬ 
cesses. He inspired them with a feeling of 
diseased curiosity to know the secrets of dark 
bosoms, while he opened his own perturbed 
spirit to their gaze. His works, and those im¬ 
ported from Germany, tended to give to our 
imagination an introspective cast, to perplex 
it with metaphysical subtleties, and to render 
our poetry “sicklied o’er with the pale cast of 
thought.” The genius of our country was 
thus in danger of being perverted from its 
purest uses to become the minister of vain 
philosophy, and the anatomist of polluted 
natures. 

“The author of Waverley” (as he delights 
to be styled) has weaned it from its idols, and 
restored to it its warm, youthful blood, and 
human affections. Nothing can be more op¬ 
posed to the gloom, the inward revolvings, 
and morbid speculations, which the world 
once seemed inclined to esteem as the sole 
prerogatives of the bard, than his exquisite 
creations. His persons are no shadowy ab¬ 
stractions—no personifications of a dogma— 
no portraits of the author varied in costume, 
but similar in features. With all their rich 
varieties of character, whether their heroical 
spirit touches on the godlike, or their wild 
eccentricities border on the farcical, they are 
men fashioned of human earth, and warm 
with human sympathies. He does not seek 
for the sublime in the mere intensity of burn¬ 
ing passion, or for sources of enjoyment in 
those feverish gratifications which some would 
teach us to believe the only felicities worthy 
of high and impassioned souls. He writes 
everywhere with a keen and healthful relish 
for all the good things of life—constantly re¬ 
freshes us where we least expected it, with a 
sense of that pleasure which is spread through 
the earth “ to be caught in stray gifts by who¬ 
ever will find,” and brightens all things with 


the spirit of gladness. There is little cf a medi¬ 
tative or retrospective cast in his works. 
Whatever age he chooses for his story, lives 
before us: we become contemporaries of all 
his persons, and sharers in all their fortunes. 
Of all men who have ever written, excepting 
Shakspeare, he has perhaps the least of ex¬ 
clusiveness, the least of those feelings which 
keep men apart from their kind. He has his 
own predilections—and we love him the better 
for them, even when they are not ours—but 
they never prevent him from grasping with 
cordial spirit all that is human. His tolerance 
is the most complete, for it extends to adverse 
bigotries; his love of enjoyment does not 
exclude the ascetic from his respect, nor does 
his fondness for hereditary rights and time- 
honoured institutions prevent his admiration 
of the fiery zeal of a sectary. His genius 
shines with an equal light on all—illuminating 
the vast hills of purple heath, the calm breast 
of the quiet water, and the rich masses of the 
grove—now gleaming with a sacred light on 
the distant towers of some old monastery, 
now softening the green-wood shade, now 
piercing the gloom of the rude cave where 
the old Covenanter lies—free and universal, 
and bounteous as the sun—and pouring its 
radiance with a like impartiality “upon a liv¬ 
ing and rejoicing world.” 

We shall not attempt, in this slight sketch, 
to follow our author regularly through all his 
rich and varied creations; but shall rather 
consider his powers in general of natural de¬ 
scription—of skill in the delineation of cha¬ 
racter—and of exciting high and poetical in¬ 
terest, by the gleams of his fancy, the tragic 
elevation of his scenes, and the fearful touches 
which he delights to borrow from the world of 
spirits. 

In the vivid description of natural scenery 
our author is wholly without a rival, unless 
Sir Walter Scott will dispute the pre-eminence 
with him; and, even then, we think the novel 
ist would be found to surpass the bard. The 
free grace of nature has, of late, contributed 
little to the charm of our highest poetry. Lord 
Byron has always, in his reference to the ma¬ 
jestic scenery of the universe, dealt rather in 
grand generalities than minute pictures, has 
used the turbulence of the elements as sym¬ 
bols of inward tempests, and sought the vast 
! solitudes and deep tranquillity of nature, but 
to assuage the fevers of the soul. Wordsworth 
—who, amidst the contempt of the ignorant 
and of the worldly wise, has been gradually 
and silently moulding all the leading spirits 






12 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


of the age—has sought communion with na¬ 
ture, for other purposes than to describe her 
external forms. He has shed on all creation a 
sweet and consecrating radiance, far other than 
« the light of common day.” In his poetry the 
hills and streams appear, not as they are seen 
by vulgar eyes, but as the poet himself, in the 
holiness of his imagination, has arrayed them. 
They are peopled not with the shapes of old 
superstition, but with the shadows of the poet’s 
thought, the dreams of a glory that shall be. 
They are resonant—not with the voice of birds, 
or the soft whisperings of the breeze, but with 
echoes from beyond the tomb. Their lowliest 
objects—a dwarf bush, an old stone, a daisy, 
or a small celandine—affect us with thoughts 
as deep, and inspire meditations as profound, 
as the loveliest scene of reposing beauty, or 
the wildest region of the mountains—because 
the heart of the poet is all in all—and the visi¬ 
ble objects of his love are not dear to us for 
their own colours or forms, but for the senti¬ 
ment which he has linked to them, and which 
they bring back upon our souls. We would 
not have this otherwise for all the romances in 
the world. But it gladdens us to see the in¬ 
trinsic claims of nature on our hearts asserted, 
and to feel that she is, for her own sake, worthy 
of deep love. It is not as the richest index 
of divine philosophy alone that she has a right 
to our affections; and, therefore, we rejoice 
that in our author she has found a votary to 
whom her works are in themselves “ an appe¬ 
tite, a feeling, and a love,” and who finds, in 
their contemplation, “no need of a remoter 
charm, by thought supplied, or any interest 
unborrowed from the eye.” Every gentle 
swelling of the ground—every gleam of the 
water—every curve and rock of the shore—all 
varieties of the earth, from the vastest crag to 
the soft grass of the woodland walk, and all 
changes of the heaven from “ morn to noon, 
from noon to latest eve,”—are placed before us, 
in his works, with a distinctness beyond that 
which the painter’s art can attain, while we 
seem to breathe the mountain air, or drink in 
the freshness of the valleys. We perceive the 
change in the landscape at every step of the 
delightful journey through which he guides 
us. Our recollection never confounds any one 
scene with another, although so many are laid 
in the same region, and are alike in general 
character. The lake among the hills, on which 
the cave of Donald Bean bordered—that near 
which the clan of the M‘Gregors combated, and 
which closed in blue calmness over the body 
of Maurice—and that which encircled the 
castle of Julian Avenel—are distinct from 
each other in the imagination, as the loveliest 
scenes which we have corporally visited. 
What in softest beauty can exceed the descrip¬ 
tion of the ruins of St. Ruth; in the lovelily 
romantic, the approach to the pass of Aberfoil; 
in varied lustre, the winding shores of Ellan- 
gowan bay; in rude and dreary majesty, the 
Highland scenes, where Ronald of the Mist 
lay hidden ; and in terrific sublimity, the rising 
of the sea on Fairport Sands, and the perils 
of Sir Arthur Wardour and his daughter ! Our 
author’s scenes of comparative barrenness are 
enchanting by the vividness of his details, and 


the fond delight with which he dwells on their 
redeeming features. We seem to know every 
little plot of green, every thicket of copse-wood, 
and every turn and cascade of the stream in 
the vale of Glendearg, and to remember each 
low bush in the barren scene of her skirmish 
between the Covenanters and Claverhouse, as 
though we had' been familiar with it in child¬ 
hood. The descriptions of this author are 
manifestly rendered more vivid by the intense 
love which he bears to his country—not only 
to her luxuriant and sublime scener}', but “ her 
bare earth, and mountains bare, and grass in the 
green field.” He will scarcely leave a brook, a 
mountain ash, or a lichen on the rocks of her 
shore, without due honour. He may fitly be re¬ 
garded as the genius of Scotland, who has given 
her a poetical interest, a vast place in the ima¬ 
gination, which may almost compensate for the 
loss of that political independence, the last 
struggling love for which he so nobly celebrates. 

“The author of Waverley” is, however,chief¬ 
ly distinguished by the number, the spirit, and 
the individuality of his characters. We know 
not, indeed, where to begin or to end with the 
vast crowd of their genial and noble shapes 
which come thronging on our memory. His 
ludicrous characters are dear to us, because 
they are seldom merely quaint or strange, the 
dry oddities of fancy, but have as genuine a 
kindred with humanity as the most gifted and 
enthusiastic of their fellows. The laughter 
which they excite is full of social sympathy, 
and we love them and our nature the better 
while we indulge it. Whose heart does not 
claim kindred with Baillie Nichol Jarvie, 
while the Glasgow weaver, without losing one 
of his nice peculiarities, kindles into honest 
warmth with his ledger in hand, and in spite 
of broad-cloth grows almost romantic 1 In 
whom does a perception of the ludicrous for a 
moment injure the veneration which the brave, 
stout-hearted and chivalrous Baron of Brad* 
wardine inspires! Who shares not in the 
fond enthusiasm of Oldbuck for black letter, in 
his eager and tremulous joy at grasping rare 
books at low prices, and in his discoveries of 
Roman camps and monuments which we can 
hardly forgive Edie Ochiltree for disproving 1 
Compared with these genial persons, the por¬ 
traits of mere singularity—however inimitably 
finished—are harsh and cold ; of these, indeed, 
the works of our author afford scarcely more 

than one signal example—Captain Dalgetty_ 

who is a mere piece of ingenious mechanism, 
like the automaton chess-player, and with all his 
cleverness, gives us little pleasure, for he excites 
as little sympathy. Almost all the persons of 
these novels, diversified as they are, are really 
endowed with some deep and elevating enthu 
siasm, which, whether breaking through ec¬ 
centricities of manner, perverted by error, or 
mingled with crime, ever asserts the majesty 
of our nature, its deep affections, and undying 
poweis. 1 his is true, not only of the divine 
enthusiasm of Flora Mac Ivor—of the sweet 
heroism of Jeannie Deans—of the angelic 
tenderness and fortitude of Rebecca, but of the 
puritanic severities and awful zeal of Balfour 
of Burley, and the yet more frightful energy 
of Macbriar, equally ready to sacrifice a blame- 



THE AUTHOR 
• 

less youth, and to bear without shrinking the 
keenest of mortal agonies. In the fierce and 
hunted child of the mist—in the daring and 
reckless libertine Staunton—in the fearful 
Elspeth—in the vengeful wife of M‘Gregor— 
are traits of wild and irregular greatness, frag¬ 
ments of might and grandeur, which show 
how noble and sacred a thing the heart of man 
is, in spite of its strangest debasements and 
perversions. How does the inimitable portrait 
of Claverhouse at first excite our hatred for 
that carelessness of human misery, that con¬ 
tempt for the life of his fellows, that cold hau¬ 
teur and finished indifference which are so 
vividly depicted;—and yet how does his mere 
soldierly enthusiasm redeem him at last, and 
almost persuade us that the honour and fame 
of such a man were cheaply purchased by a 
thousand lives! We can scarcely class Rob 
Roy among these mingled characters. He has 
nothing but the name and the fortune of an 
outlaw and a robber. He is, in truth, one of 
the noblest of heroes—a Prince of the hether 
and the rock—whose very thirst for vengeance 
is tempered and harmonized by his fondness 
for the wild and lovely scenes of his home. 
Indeed the influences of majestic scenery are 
to be perceived tinging the rudest minds which 
the author has made to expatiate amidst its 
solitudes. The passions even of Burley and of 
Macbriar borrow a grace from the steep crags, 
the deep masses of shade, and the silent caves, 
among which they were nurtured, as the most 
rapid and perturbed stream which rushes 
through a wild and romantic region bears 
some reflection of noble imagery on its im¬ 
petuous surface. To some of his less stern 
but unlettered personages, nature seems to 
have been a kindly instructor, nurturing high 
thoughts within them, and well supplying to 
them all the lack of written wisdom. The wild 
sublimity of Meg Merrilies is derived from 
her long converse with the glories of creation ; 
the floating clouds have lent to her something 
of their grace ; she has contemplated the rocks 
till her soul is firm as they, and gazed intently 
on the face of nature until she has become 
half acquainted with its mysteries. The old 
king’s headman has not journeyed for years 
in vain among the hills and woods; their 
beauty has sunk into his soul; and his days 
seem bound each to each by “natural piety,” 
which he has learned among them. 

That we think there-is much of true poeti¬ 
cal genius—much of that which softens, re¬ 
fines, and elevates humanity in the works of 
this author—may be inferred from our remarks 
on his power of imbodying human character. 
The gleams of a soft and delicate fancy are 
tenderly cast over many of their scenes— 
heightening that which is already lovely, re¬ 
lieving the gloomy, and making even the thin 
blades of barren regions shine refreshingly on 
the eyes. We occasionally meet with a pure 
and pensive beauty, as in Pattieson’s descrip¬ 
tion of his sensations in his evening walks 
after the feverish drudgery of his school— 
with wild yet graceful fantasies, as in the 
songs of Davie Gellatly—or with visionary 
and aerial shapes, like the spirit of the House 
of Avenel. But the poetry of this author is, for 


OF WAVERLEY. u 

the most part, of a far deeper cast;—flowing 
from his intense consciousness of the mysteries 
of our nature, and constantly impressing on 
our minds the high sanctities and the mortal 
destiny of our being. No one has ever made 
so impressive a use of the solemnities of life 
and death—of the awfulness which rests over 
the dying, and renders all their words and ac¬ 
tions sacred—or of the fond retrospection, and 
the intense present enjoyment, snatched fear¬ 
fully as if to secure it from fate, which are the 
peculiar blessings of a short and uncertain ex¬ 
istence. Was ever the robustness of life—the 
mantling of the strong current of joyous blood 
—the high animation of health, spirits, and a 
stout heart, more vividly brought before the 
mind than in the description of Frank Ken¬ 
nedy’s demeanour as he rides lustily forth, 
never to return?—or the fearful change from 
this hearty enjoyment of life to the chillness 
of mortality, more deeply impressed on the 
imagination than in all the minute examina¬ 
tions of the scene of his murder, the traces of 
the deadly contest, the last marks of the strug¬ 
gling footsteps, and the description of the 
corpse at the foot of the crag 1 Can a scene 
of mortality be conceived more fearful than 
that where Bertram, in the glen of Dernclugh, 
witnesses the last agonies of one over whom 
Meg Merrilies is chanting her wild ditties to 
soothe the passage of the spirit? What a stu¬ 
pendous scene is that of the young fisher’s 
funeral—the wretched father writhing in the 
contortions of agony—the mother silent in ten¬ 
der sorrow—the motley crowd assembled to par¬ 
take of strange festivity—and the old grand¬ 
mother fearfully linking the living to the dead, 
now turning her wheel in apathy and uncon¬ 
sciousness, now drinking with frightful mirth 
to many “such merry meetings,” now, to the 
astonishment of the beholders, rising to comfort 
her son, and intimating with horrid solemnity 
that there was more reason to mourn for her 
than for the departed ! Equal in terrific power, 
is the view given us of the last confession and 
death of that “ awful woman”—her intense 
perception of her long past guilt, with her 
deadness to all else—her yet quenchless hate 
to the object of her youthful vengeance, ani¬ 
mating her frame with unearthly fire—her 
dying fancies that she is about to follow her 
mistress, and the broken images of old gran¬ 
deur which flit before her as she perishes. 
These things are conceived in the highest 
spirit of tragedy, which makes life and death 
meet together, which exhibits humanity strip¬ 
ped of its accidents in all its depth and height, 
which impresses us at once with the victory 
of death, and of the eternity of those energies 
which it appears to subdue. There are also 
in these works, situations of human interest 
as strong as ever were invented—attended too 
with all that high apparel of the imagination, 
which renders the images of fear and anguish 
majestical. Such is that scene in the lone 
house after the defeat of the Covenanters, 
where Morton finds himself in the midst of a 
band of zealots, who regard him as given by 
God into their hands as a victim—where he is 
placed before the clock to gaze on the advances 
of the hand to the hour when he is to be slain, 
B 





14 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


amidst the horrible devotion of his foes. The 
whole scene is, we think, without an equal in 
the conceptions which dramatic power has 
been able to imbody. Its startling unexpected¬ 
ness, yet its perfect probability to the imagina¬ 
tion—the high tone and wild enthusiasm of 
character in the murderers—the sacrificial 
cast of their intended deed in their own raised 
and perverted thoughts—the fearful view given 
to the bodily senses of their prisoner of his re¬ 
maining moments by the segment of the circle 
yet to be traversed by the finger of the clock 
before him, enable us to participate in the 
workings of his own dizzy soul, as he stands 
“awaiting till the sword destined to slay him 
crept out of its scabbard gradually, and, as it 
were by straw-breadths,” and condemned to 
drink the bitterness of death “drop by drop,” 
while his destined executioners seem “to alter 
their forms and features like the spectres in a 
feverish dream ; their features become larger 
and their faces more disturbed;” until the 
beings around him appear actually demons, 
the walls seem to drop with blood, and “ the 
light tick of the clock thrills on his ear with 
such loud, painful distinctness, as if each 
sound were the prick of a bodkin inflicted on 
the naked nerve of the organ.” The effect is 
even retrospectively heightened by the heroic 
deaths of the Covenanters immediately suc¬ 
ceeding, which give a dignity and a consecra¬ 
tion to their late terrific design. The trial and 
execution of Fergus Mac Ivor are also, in the 
most exalted sense of the term, tragical. They 
are not only of breathless interest from the ex¬ 
ternal circumstances, nor of moral grandeur 
from the heroism of Fergus and his follower, 
but of poetic dignity from that power of ima¬ 
gination which renders for a time the rules of 
law sublime as well as fearful, and gives to 
all the formalities of a trial more than a judi¬ 
cial majesty. It is seldom, indeed, that the 
terrors of our author offend or shock us, be¬ 
cause they are accompanied by that reconcil¬ 
ing power which softens without breaking the 
current of our sympathies. But there are some 
few instances of unrelieved horror—or of an¬ 
guish, which overmasters fantasy—as the 
strangling of Glossin by Dirk Haiteraich, the 
administering of the torture to Macbriar, and 
the bloody bridal of Lammermuir. If we com¬ 
pare these with the terrors of Burley in his 
cave—where with his naked sword in one 
hand and his Bible in the other, he wrestles 
with his own remorse, believing it, in the 
spirit of his faith, a fiend of Satan—and with 
the sinking of Ravenswood in the sands; we 
shall feel how the grandeur of religious thought 
in the first instance, and the stately scenery of 
nature and the air of the supernatural in the 
last, ennoble agony, and render horrors grate¬ 
ful to the soul. 

We must not pass over, without due ac¬ 
knowledgment, the power of our author in the 
description of battles, as exhibited in his pic¬ 
tures of the engagement at Preston Pans, of 
the first skirmish with the Covjenanters, in 
which they overcome Claverhouse, and of the 
battle in which they were, in turn, defeated. 
The art by which he contrives at once to give 
the mortal contest in all its breadth and vast¬ 


ness—to present it to us in the noblest masses, 
yet to make us spectators of each individual 
circumstance of interest in the field, may ex¬ 
cite the envy of a painter. We know of no¬ 
thing resembling those delineations in history 
or romance, except the descriptions given by 
Thucydides of the blockade of Platsea, of the 
Corcyrman massacres, of the attempt to retake 
Epipolae in the night, of the great naval action 
before Syracuse, of all the romantic events of 
the Sicilian war, and the varied miseries of 
the Athenian army in their retreat under Ni- 
cias. In the life and spirit, and minuteness of 
the details—in the intermingling of allusions 
to the scenery of the contests—and in the ge¬ 
neral fervour breathed over the whole, there is 
a remarkable resemblance between these pas¬ 
sages of the Greek historian, and the narra¬ 
tives of Scottish contests by the author of 
Waverley. There is, too, the same patriotic zeal 
in both; though the feeling in the former is of 
a more awful and melancholy cast, and that 
of the latter more light and cheerful. The 
Scottish novelist may, like the noblest histo¬ 
rians, boast that he has given to his country 
“ Kth/uu. t; aua" —a possession for ever! 

It remains that we should say a word on 
the use made of the supernatural in these ro¬ 
mances. There is, in the mode of its employ¬ 
ment, more of gusto—more that approaches to 
an actual belief in its wonders, than in the 
works of any other author of these incredulous 
times. Even Shakspeare himself, in his re¬ 
mote age, does not appear to have drank in 
so deeply the spirit of superstition as our 
novelist of the nineteenth century. He treats, 
indeed, all the fantasies of his countrymen 
with that spirit of allowance and fond regard 
with which he always touches on human 
emotions. But he does not seem to have 
heartily partaken in them as awful realities. 
His witches have power to excite wonder, but 
little to chill men’s bloods. Ariel, the visions 
of Prospero’s enchanted isle, the “quaint 
fairies and the dapper elves” of the Midsum¬ 
mer Night’s Dream glitter on the fancy, in a 
thousand shapes of dainty loveliness, but 
never affect us otherwise than as creations of 
the poet’s brain. Even the ghost in Hamlet 
does not appal us half so fearfully as many a 
homely tale which has nothing to recommend 
it but the earnest belief of its tremulous re¬ 
citer. There is little magic in the web of life, 
notwithstanding all the variety of its shades, 
as Shakspeare has drawn it. Not so is it 
with our author; his spells have manifest 
hold on himself, and, therefore, they are very 
potent with the spirits of his readers. No 
prophetic intimation in his works is ever 
suffered to fail. The spirit which appears to 
Fergus—the astronomical predictions of Guy 
Mannering—the eloquent curses, and more 
eloquent blessings, of Meg Merrilies—the dying 
denunciation of Mucklewrath—the old pro 
phecy in the Bride of Lammermuir—all are 
fulfilled to the very letter. The high and 
joyous spirits of Kennedy are observed by one 
of the bystanders as intimations of his speed? 
fate. We are far from disapproving of these 
touches of the super-human, for they are 
made to blend harmoniously with the freshest 





GODWIN. 


15 


hues of life, and without destroying its native 
colouring, give to it a more solemn tinge. 
But we cannot extend our indulgence to the 
seer in the Legend of Montrose, or the Lady 
of Avenel, in the Monastery; where the spirits 
of another world do not cast their shadowings 
on this, but stalk forth in open light, and “in 
form as palpable” as any of the mortal cha¬ 
racters. In works of passion, fairies and 
ghosts can scarcely be “ simple products of 
the common day,” without destroying all har¬ 
mony in our perceptions, and bringing the 
whole into discredit with the imagination as 
well as the feelings. Fairy tales are among 
the most exquisite things in the world, and so 
are delineations of humanity like those of our 
author; but they can never be blended with¬ 
out debasing the former into chill substances, 
or refining the latter into airy nothings. 


We shall avoid the fruitless task of dwell¬ 
ing on the defects of this author, or the ge¬ 
neral insipidity of his lovers, on the want of 
skill in the development of his plots, on the 
clumsiness of his prefatory introductions, or 
the impotence of many of his conclusions. 
He has done his country and his nature no 
ordinary service. He has brought romance 
almost into our own times, and made the 
nobleness of humanity familiar to our daily 
thoughts. He has enriched history to us by 
opening such varied and delicious vistas to 
our gaze, beneath the range of its loftier events 
and more public characters. May his intel 
lectual treasury prove exhaustless as the purse 
of Fortunatus, and may he dip into it unspar¬ 
ingly for the delight and the benefit of his 
species! 


GODWIN. 


[New Monthly Magazine.] 


Mr. Godwin is the most original—not only 
of living novelists—but of living writers in 
prose. There are, indeed very few authors of 
any age who are so clearly entitled to the 
praise of having produced works, the first 
perusal of which is a signal event in man’s 
internal history. His genius is by far the 
most extraordinary, which the great shaking 
of nations and of principles—the French revo¬ 
lution—impelled and directed in its progress. 
English literature, at the period of that mar¬ 
vellous change, had become sterile ; the rich 
luxuriance which once overspread its surface, 
had gradually declined into thin and scattered 
productions of feeble growth and transient 
duration. The fearful convulsion which 
agitated the world of politics and of morals, 
tore up this shallow and exhausted surface— 
disclosed vast treasures which had been con¬ 
cealed for centuries—burst open the secret 
springs of imagination and of thought—and 
left, instead of the smooth and weary plain, a 
region of deep valleys and of shapeless hills, 
of new caiaracts and of awful abysses, of 
spots blasted into everlasting barrenness, and 
regions of deepest and richest soil. Our 
author partook in the first enthusiasms of the 
spirit-stirring season—in “its pleasant exer¬ 
cise of hope and joy”—in much of its specu¬ 
lative extravagance, but in none of its practi¬ 
cal excesses. He was roused not into action 
but into thought; and the high and undying 
energies of his soul, unwasted on vain efforts 
for the actual regeneration of man, gathered 
strength in those pure fields of meditation to 
which they were limited.. The power which 
might have ruled the disturbed nations with 
the wildest, directed only to the creation of 
high theories and of marvellous tales, im¬ 
parted to its works a stern reality, and a 


moveless grandeur which never could spring 
from mere fantasy. His works are not like 
those which a man, who is endued with a 
deep sense of beauty, or a rare faculty of ob¬ 
servation, or a sportive wit, or a breathing 
eloquence, may fabricate as the “idle busi¬ 
ness” of his life, as the means of profit or of 
fame. They have more in them of acts than 
of writings. They are the living and the im¬ 
mortal deeds of a man who must have been a 
great political adventurer had he not been an 
author. There is in “ Caleb Williams” alone 
the material—the real burning energy—which 
might have animated a hundred schemes for 
the weal or wo of the species. 

No writer of fictions has ever succeeded so 
strikingly as Mr. Godwin, with so little ad¬ 
ventitious aid. His works are neither gay 
creatures of the element, nor pictures of ex¬ 
ternal life—they derive not their charm from 
the delusions of fancy, or the familiarities of 
daily habitude—and are as destitute of the 
fascinations of light satire and felicitous de¬ 
lineation of society, as they are of the magic 
of the Arabian Tales. His style has “no 
figures and no fantasies,” but is simple and 
austere. Yet his novels have a power which 
so enthralls us, that we half doubt, when we 
read them in youth, whether all our experi¬ 
ence is not a dream, and these the only reali¬ 
ties. He lays bare to us the innate might and 
majesty of man. He takes the simplest and 
most ordinary emotions of our nature, and 
makes us feel the springs of delight or of 
agony which they contain, the stupendous force 
which lies hid within them, and the sublime 
mysteries with which they are connected. He 
exhibits the naked wrestle of the passions in 
a vast solitude, where no object of material 
beauty disturbs our attention from the august 






le TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


spectacle, and where the least beating of the 
heart is audible in the depth of the stillness. 
His works endow the abstractions of life with 
more of real presence, and make us more in¬ 
tensely conscious of existence than any others 
with which we are acquainted. They give us 
a new feeling of the capacity of our nature for 
action or for suffering, make the currents of 
our blood mantle within us, and our bosoms 
heave with indistinct desires for the keenest 
excitements and the strangest perils. We feel 
as though we could live years in moments of 
energetic life, while we sympathize with his 
breathing characters. In things which before 
appeared indifferent, we discern sources of 
the fullest delight or of the most intense 
anguish. The healthful breathings of the 
common air seem instinct with an unspeaka¬ 
ble rapture. The most ordinary habits which 
link one season of life to another become the 
awakeners of thoughts and of remembrances 
“ which do often lie too deep for tears.” The 
nicest disturbances of the imagination make 
the inmost fibres of the being quiver with ago¬ 
nies. Passions which have not usually been 
thought worthy to agitate the soul, now first 
seem to have their own ardent beatings, and 
their tumultuous joys. We seem capable of 
a more vivid life than we have ever before felt 
or dreamed of, and scarcely wonder that he 
who could thus give us a new sense of our 
own vitality, should have imagined that mind 
might become omnipotent over matter, and 
that he was able, by an effort of the will, to 
become corporeally immortal! 

The intensity of passion which is manifested 
in the novels of Godwin is of a very different 
kind from that which burns in the poems of a 
noble bard, whom he has been sometimes er¬ 
roneously supposed to resemble. The former 
sets before us mightiest realities in clear vi¬ 
sion ; the latter imbodies the phantoms of a 
feverish dream. The strength of Godwin is 
the pure energy of unsophisticated nature ; that 
of Lord Byron is the fury of disease. The 
grandeur of the last is derived from its transi¬ 
toriness ; that of the first from its eternal es¬ 
sence. The emotion in the poet receives no 
inconsiderable part of its force from its rebound 
from the dark rocks and giant barriers which 
seem to confine its rage within narrow bound¬ 
aries ; the feeling of the novelist is in its own 
natural current deep and resistless. The per¬ 
sons of the bard feel intensely, because they 
soon shall feel no more ; those of the novelist 
glow, and kindle, and agonize, because they 
shall never perish. In the works of both, guilt 
is often associated with sublime energy; but 
how dissimilar are the impressions which they 
leave on the spirit! Lord Byron strangely 
blends the moral degradation with the intellec¬ 
tual majesty: so that goodness appears tame, 
and crime only is honoured and exalted. God¬ 
win, on the other hand,only teaches us bitterly 
to mourn the evil which has been cast on a 
noble nature, and to regard the energy of the 
character not as inseparably linked with vice, 
but as destined ultimately to subdue it. He 
makes us everywhere feel that crime is not 
the native heritage, but the accident, of the 
species, of which we are members. He im¬ 


presses us with the immortality of virtue ; and 
while he leaves us painfully to regret the stains 
which the most gifted and energetic charac¬ 
ters contract amidst the pollutions of time, he 
inspires us with hope that these shall pass 
away for ever. We drink in unshaken confi¬ 
dence the good and the true, which is ever of 
more value than hatred or contempt for the 
evil! 

“ Caleb Williams,” the earliest, is also the 
most popular of our author’s romances, not 
because his latter -works have been less rich in 
sentiment and passion, but because they are, 
for the most part, confined to the development 
of single characters ; while in this there is the 
opposition and death grapple of two beings, 
each endowed with poignant sensibilities and 
quenchless energy. There is no work of fic¬ 
tion which more rivets the attention—no tra¬ 
gedy which exhibits a struggle more sublime, 
or sufferings more intense, than this ; yet to 
produce the effect, no complicated machinery 
is employed, but the springs of action are few 
and simple. The motives are at once common 
and elevated, and are purely intellectual, with¬ 
out appearing for an instant inadequate to 
their mighty issues. Curiosity, for instance, 
which generally seems a low and ignoble mo¬ 
tive for scrutinizing the secrets of a man’s life, 
here seizes with strange fascination on a gen¬ 
tle and ingenuous spirit, and supplies it with 
excitement as fervid, and snatches of delight 
as precious and as fearful, as those feelings 
create which we are accustomed to regard as 
alone worthy to enrapture or to agitate. The 
involuntary recurrence by Williams to the 
string of phrensy in the soul of one whom he 
would die to serve—the workings of his tor¬ 
tures on the heart of Falkland till they wring 
confidence from him—and the net thenceforth 
spread over the path of the youth like an invi¬ 
sible spell by his agonized master, surprising as 
they are, arise from causes so natural and so ade¬ 
quate, that the imagination at once owns them 
as authentic. The mild beauty of Falkland’s 
natural character, contrasted with the guilt he 
has incurred, and his severe purpose to lead a 
long life of agony and crime, that his fame 
may be preserved spotless, is affecting almost 
without example. There is a rude grandeur 
even in the gigantic oppressor Tyrel, which all 
his disgusting enormities cannot destroy. In¬ 
dependently of the master-spring of interest, 
there are in this novel individual passages 
which can never be forgotten. Such are the 
fearful flight of Emily with her ravisher—the 
escape of Caleb Williams from prison, and his 
enthusiastic sensations on the recovery of his 
freedom, though wounded and almost dying 
without help—and the scenes of his peril 
among the robbers. Perhaps this work is the 
grandest ever constructed out of the simple ele¬ 
ments of humanity, without any extrinsic aid 
from imagination, wit, or memory. 

In “ St. Leon,” Mr. Godwin has sought the 
stores of the supernatural;—but the “ metaphy¬ 
sical aid” which he has condescended to ac¬ 
cept is not adapted to carry him farther from 
nature, but to ensure a more intimate and wide 
communion with its mysteries. His hero does 
not acquire th« philosopher’s stone and the 





GODWIN. 


17 


elixir of immortality to furnish out for himself 
a dainty solitude, where he may dwell, soothed 
with the music of his own undying thoughts, 
and rejoicing in his severance from his frail 
and transitory fellows. Apart from those 
among whom he moves, his yearnings for 
sympathy become more intense as it eludes 
him, and his perceptions of the mortal lot of 
his species become more vivid and more fond, 
as he looks on it from an intellectual eminence 
which is alike unassailable to death and to joy. 
Even in this work, where the author has to 
conduct a perpetual miracle, his exceeding 
earnestness makes it difficult to believe him a 
fabulist. Listen to his hero, as he expatiates 
in the first consciousness of his high preroga¬ 
tives : 

“ I surveyed my limbs, all the joints and ar¬ 
ticulations of my frame, with curiosity and 
astonishment. What! exclaimed I, these 
limbs, ♦his complicated but brittle frame shall 
last for ever! No disease shall attack it; no 
pain shall seize it; *leath shall withhold from 
it for ever his abhorred grasp! Perpetual 
vigour, perpetual activity, perpetual youth, 
shall take up their abode with me ! Time shall 
generate in me no decay, shall not add a wrin¬ 
kle to my brow, or convert a hair of my head 
to gray! This body was formed to die ; this 
edifice to crumble into dust; the principles of 
corruption and mortality are mixed up in every 
atom of my frame. But for me the laws of 
nature are suspended, the eternal wheels of the 
universe roll backward; I am destined to be 
triumphant over Fate and Time! Months, 
years, cycles, centuries ! To me these are but 
as indivisible moments. I shall never become 
old ; I shall always be, as it were, in the porch 
and infancy of existence; no lapse of years 
shall subtract any thing from my future dura¬ 
tion. I was born under Louis the Twelfth; 
the life of Francis the First now threatens a 
speedy termination; he will be gathered to his 
fathers, and Henry, his son, will succeed him. 
But what are princes, and kings, and genera¬ 
tions of men to me ! I shall become familiar 
with the rise and fall of empires ; in a little 
while the very name of France, my country, 
will perish from off the face of the earth, and 
men will dispute about the situation of Paris, 
as they dispute about the site of ancient Nine¬ 
veh, and Babylon, and Troy. Yet I shall still 
be young. I shall take my most distant poste¬ 
rity by the hand; I shall accompany them in 
their career; and, when they are worn out and 
exhausted, shall shut up the tomb over them, 
and set forward.” 

This is a strange tale, but it tells like a true 
one! When we first read it, it seemed as 
though it had itself the power of alchemy to 
steal into our veins, and render us capable of 
resisting death and age. For a short—too 
short! a space, all time seemed open to our 
personal view—we felt no longer as of yes¬ 
terday; but the grandest parts of our know¬ 
ledge of the past seemed mightiest recollec¬ 
tions of a far-off childhood. 

“ The wars we too remembered of King- Nine, 

And old Assaracus, and Ibycus divine.” 

This was the happy extravagance of an 
3 


hour; but it is ever the peculiar power of Mr. 
Godwin to make us feel that there is something 
within us which cannot perish ! 

“ Fleetwood” has less of our author’s cha¬ 
racteristic energy than any other of his works. 
The earlier parts of it, indeed, where the forma¬ 
tion of the hero’s character, in free rovings 
amidst the wildest of nature’s scenery, is 
traced, have a deep beauty which reminds us 
of some of the holiest imaginations of Words¬ 
worth. But when the author would follow him 
into the world—through the frolics of college, 
the dissipations of Paris, and the petty dis¬ 
quietudes of matrimonial life—we feel that he 
has condescended too far. He is no graceful 
trifler; he cannot work in these frail and low 
materials. There is, however, one scene in 
this novel most wild and fearful. This is 
where Fleetwood, who has long brooded in 
anguish over the idea of his wife’s falsehood, 
keeps strange festival on his wedding-day— 
when, having procured a waxen image of her 
whom he believes perfidious, and dressed a 
frightful figure in a uniform to represent her 
imagined paramour, he locks himself in an 
apartment with these horrid counterfeits, a 
supper of cold meats, and a barrel-organ, on 
which he plays the tunes often heard from the 
pair he believes guilty, till his silent agony 
gives place to delirium, he gazes around with 
glassy eyes, sees strange sights and dallies 
with frightful mockeries, and at last tears the 
dreadful spectacle to atoms, and is seized with 
furious madness. We do not remember, even 
in the works of our old dramatists, any thing 
of its kind comparable to this voluptuous fan¬ 
tasy of despair. 

“Mandeville” has all the power of its au¬ 
thor’s earliest writings ; but its main subject— 
the development of an engrossing and madden¬ 
ing hatred—is not one which can excite 
human sympathy. There is, however, a bright 
relief to the gloom of the picture, in the angelic 
disposition of Clifford, and the sparkling love¬ 
liness of Henrietta, who appears “ full of life, 
and splendour, and joy.” All Mr. Godwin’s 
female heroines have a certain airiness and 
radiance—a visionary grace, peculiar to them, 
which may at first surprise by their contrast 
to the robustness of his masculine creations. 
But it will perhaps be found that the more deeply 
man is conversant with the energies of his own 
heart, the more will he seek for opposite qua¬ 
lities in woman. 

Of all Mr. Godwin’s writings the choicest in 
point of style is a little essay “on Sepulchres.” 
Here his philosophic thought, subdued and 
sweetened by the contemplation of mortality, 
is breathed forth in the gentlest tone. His 
“ Political Justice,” with all the extravagance 
of its first edition, or with all the inconsisten¬ 
cies of its last, is a noble work, replete with 
lofty principle and thought, and often leading 
to the most striking results by a process of the 
severest reasoning. Man, indeed, cannot and 
ought not to act universally on its leading doc¬ 
trine—that we should in all things seek only 
the greatest amount of good without favour or 
affection ; but it is at least better than the low 
selfishness of the world. It breathes also a 
mild and cheerful faith in the progressive ad- 
n 2 




13 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


vances and the final perfection of the species. 
It was this good hope for humanity which ex¬ 
cited Mr. Malthus to affirm, that there is in the 
constitution of man’s nature a perpetual barrier 
to any extensive improvement in his earthly 
condition. After a long interval, Mr. Godwin 
has announced a reply to this popular system— 
a system which reduces man to an animal, 
governed by blind instinct, and destitute of rea¬ 
son, sentiment, imagination, and hope, whose 
most mysterious instincts are matter of calcu¬ 
lation to be estimated by rules of geometrical 
series !—Most earnestly do we desire to wit¬ 


ness his success. To our minds, indeed, he 
sufficiently proves the falsehood of his adver¬ 
sary’s doctrines by his own intellectual charac¬ 
ter. His works are, in themselves, evidences 
that there is power and energy in man which 
have never yet been fully brought into action, 
and which were not given to the species in 
vain. He has lived himself in the soft and 
mild light of those peaceful years, which he 
believes shall hereafter bless the world, when 
force and selfishness shall disappear, and love 
and joy shall be the unerring lights of the 
species. 


MATURIN. 

[New Monthly Magazine.] 


The author of Montorio and of Bertram is 
unquestionably a person gifted with no ordi¬ 
nary powers. He has a quick sensibility—a 
penetrating and intuitive acuteness—and an 
unrivalled vigour and felicity of language, 
which enable him at one time to attain the 
happiest condensation of thought, and at 
others to pour forth a stream of eloquence, rich, 
flowing, and deep, checkered with images of 
delicate loveliness, or darkened by broad sha¬ 
dows cast from objects of stern and adaman¬ 
tine majesty. Yet, in common with many 
other potent spirits of the present time, he fails 
to excite within us any pure and lasting sym¬ 
pathy. We do not, on reading his works, feel 
that we have entered on a precious and im¬ 
perishable treasure. They dazzle, they delight, 
they surprise, and they weary us—we lay them 
down with a vague admiration for the author, 
and try to shake off their influence as we do 
the impressions of a feverish dream. It is not 
thus that we receive the productions of genu¬ 
ine and holy bards—of Shakspeare, of Milton, 
of Spenser, or of Wordsworth-^-whose far- 
reaching imaginations come home to our 
hearts, who become the companions of our 
sweetest moods, and with whom we long to 
“ set up our everlasting rest.” Their creations 
are often nearest to our hearts when they are 
farthest removed from the actual experience 
of our lives. We travel on the bright tracks 
which their genius reveals to us as safely and 
with as sure and fond a tread as along the 
broad highway of the world. When the re¬ 
gions which they set before us are the most 
distant from our ordinary perceptions, we yet 
seem at home in them, their wonders are 
strangely familiar to us, and the scene, over¬ 
spread with a consecrating and lovely lustre, 
breaks on us, not as a wild fantastic novelty, 
but as a revived recollection of some holier 
life, which the soul rejoices thus delightfully to 
recognise. 

Not thus do the works of Mr. Maturin—ori¬ 
ginal and surprising as they often are—affect 
us. They have no fibres in them which en¬ 


twine with the heart-strings, and which keep 
their hold until the golden chords of our sensi¬ 
bility and imagination themselves are broken. 
They pass by us sometimes like gorgeous 
phantoms, sometimes like “horrible shadows 
and Unreal mockeries,” which seem to elude 
us because they are not of us. When we fol¬ 
low him closest, he introduces us into a region 
where all is unsatisfactory and unreal—the 
chaos of principles, fancies, and passion's— 
where mightiest elements are yet floating with¬ 
out order, where appearances between sub¬ 
stance and shadow perpetually harass us, 
where visionary forms beckon us through 
painful avenues, and, on approach, sink into 
despicable realities; and pillars which looked 
ponderous and immovable at a distance, melt 
at the touch into air, and are found to be only 
masses of vapour and of cloud. He neither 
raises us to the skies, nor “ brings his angels 
down,” but astonishes by a phantasmagoria of 
strange appearances, sometimes scarcely dis¬ 
tinguishable in member, joint, or limb, but 
which, when most clearly defined, come not 
near us, nor claim kindred by a warm and 
living touch. This chill remoteness from hu¬ 
manity is attended by a general want of har¬ 
mony and proportion in the whole—by a wild 
excursiveness of sensibility and thought— 
which add to its ungenial influence, and may 
be traced to the same causes. 

If we were disposed to refer these defects to 
one general source, we should attribute them 
to the want of an imagination proportionate to 
sensibility and to mastery of language in the 
writer’s mind, or to his comparative neglect of 
that most divine of human faculties. It is edi¬ 
fying to observe how completely the nature of 
this power is mistaken by many who profess 
to decide on matters of taste. They regard it 
as something wild and irregular, the reverse 
of truth, nature, and reason, which is divided 
from insanity only by “a thin partition,” 
and which, uncontrolled by sterner powers, 
forms the essence of madness. They think it 
abounds in speeches crowded with tawdry and 





MATURIN. 


19 


superfluous epithets—in the discourses of Dr. 
Chalmers, because they deal so largely in in¬ 
finite obscurities that there is no room for a 
single image—and in the poems of Lord Byron, 
because his characters are so unlike all beings 
which have ever existed. Far otherwise thought 
Spencer when he represented the laurel as the 
meed—not of poets insane—but “ of poets 
sage.” True imagination is, indeed, the deep 
eye of the profoundest wisdom- It is opposed 
to reason, not in its results, but in its process ; 
it does not demonstrate truth only because it 
sees it. There are vast and eternal realities 
in our nature, which reason proves to exist— 
which sensibility “feels after and finds”—and 
which imagination beholds in clear and solemn 
vision, and pictures with a force and vividness 
which assures their existence even to ungifted 
mortals. Its subjects are the true, the univer¬ 
sal, and the lasting. Its distinguishing pro¬ 
perty has no relation to dimness, or indistinct¬ 
ness, or dazzling radiance, or turbulent con¬ 
fusedness, but is the power of setting all things 
in the clearest light, and bringing them into 
perfect harmony. Like the telescope it does 
not only magnify celestial objects, but brings 
them nearer to us. Of all the faculties it is 
the severest and the most unerring. Reason 
may beguile with splendid sophistry; sensibi¬ 
lity may fatally misguide; but if imagination 
exists at all, it must exhibit only the real. A 
mirror can no more reflect an object which is 
not before it, than the imagination can show 
the false and the baseless. By revealing tons 
its results in the language of imagery, it gives 
to them almost the evidence of the senses. If 
the analogy between an idea and its physical 
exponent is not complete, there is no effort 
of imagination—if it is, the truth is seen, and 
felt, and enjoyed, like the colours and forms 
of the material universe. And this effect is 
produced not only with the greatest possible 
certainty, but in the fewest possible words. 
Yet even when this is done—when the illus¬ 
tration is not only the most enchanting, but 
the most convincing of proofs—the writer is 
too often contemptuously depreciated as flowery, 
by the advocates of mere reason. Strange 
chance ! that he who has imbodied truth in a 
living image, and thus rendered it visible to 
the intellectual perceptions, should be con¬ 
founded with those who conceal all sense and 
meaning beneath mere verbiage and fragments 
of disjointed metaphor! 

Thus the products of genuine imagination 
are “ all compact.” It is, indeed, only the 
compactness and harmony of ‘its pictures 
which give to it its name or its value. To 
discover that there are mighty elements in 
humanity—to observe that there are bright 
hues and graceful forms in the external world 
—and to know the fitting names of these—is 
all which is required to furnish out a rich stock 
of spurious imagination to one who aspires to 
the claim of a wild and irregular genius. For 
him a dictionary is a sufficient guide to Par¬ 
nassus. It is only by representing those in¬ 
tellectual elements in their finest harmony—by 
combining those hues and forms in the fairest 
pictures—or by making the glorious combina¬ 
tions of external things the symbols of truth 


and moral beauty—that imagination really puts 
forth its divine energies-- We do not charge 
on Mr. Maturin that he is destitute of power 
to do this, or that he does not sometimes direct 
it to its purest uses. But his sensibility is so 
much more quick and subtle than his authority 
over his impressions is complete ; the flow of 
his words so much more copious and facile 
than the throng of images on his mincf; that 
he too often confounds us with unnumbered 
snatches and imperfect gleams of beauty, or 
astonishes us by an outpouring of eloquent 
bombast, instead of enriching our souls with 
distinct and vivid conceptions. Like many 
other writers of the present time—especially 
of his own country—he does not Wait until 
the stream which young enthusiasm sets loose 
shall work itself clear, and calmly reflect the 
highest heavens. His creations bear any 
stamp but that of truth and soberness. He 
sees the glories of the external world, and the 
mightier wonders of man’s moral and intel¬ 
lectual nature, with a quick sense, and feels 
them with an exquisite sympathy—but he 
gazes on them in “ very drunkenness of heart,” 
and becomes giddy with his own indistinct 
emotions, till all things seem confounded in a 
gay bacchanalian dance, and assume strange 
fantastic combinations; which, when trans¬ 
ferred to his works, startle for a moment, but 
do not produce that “ sober certainty of waking 
bliss” which real imagination assures. There 
are two qualities necessary to form a truly 
imaginative writer—a quicker and an intenser 
feeling than ordinary men possess for the beau¬ 
tiful and the sublime, and the calm and medi¬ 
tative power of regulating, combining, and ar¬ 
ranging its own impressions, and of distinctly 
bodying forth the final results of this harmo¬ 
nizing process. Where the first of these pro¬ 
perties exists, the last is, perhaps, attainable 
by that deep and careful study which is more 
necessary to a poet than to any artist who 
works in mere earthly materials. But this 
study many of. the most gifted of modern 
writers unhappily disdain; and if mere sale 
and popularity are their objects, they are right; 
for, in the multitude, the wild, the disjointed, the 
incoherent, and the paradoxical, which are but 
for a moment, necessarily awaken more imme¬ 
diate sensation than the pure and harmonious, 
which are destined to last while nature and 
the soul shall endure. 

It is easy to perceive how it is that the im¬ 
perfect creations of men of sensibility and of 
eloquence strike and dazzle more'at the first, 
than the completest works of truly imaginative 
poets. A perfect statue—a temple fashioned 
with exactest art—appear less, at a mere 
glance, from the nicety of their proportions. 
The vast majority of readers, in an age like 
ours, have neither leisure nor taste to seek and 
ponder over the effusions of holiest genius. 
They must be awakened into admiration by 
something new and strange and surprising; 
and the more remote from their daily thoughts 
and habits—the more fantastical and daring— 
the effort, the more will it please, because the 
more it will rouse them. Thus a man who 
will exhibit some impossible combination of 
heroism and meanness—of virtue and of vica 



so 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


—of heavenly love and infernal malignity and 
baseness—will receive their wonder and their 
praise. They call this power, which is in 
reality the most pitiable weakness. It is be¬ 
cause a writer has not imagination enough to 
exhibit in new forms the universal qualities 
of nature and the soul, that he takes some 
strange and horrible anomaly as his theme. 
Incompetent to the divine task of rendering 
beauty “ a simple product of the common 
day,” he tries to excite emotion by disclosing 
the foulest recess of the foulest heart. As he 
strikes only one feeling, and that coarsely and 
ungently, he appears to wield a mightier 
weapon than he whose harmonious beauty 
sheds its influence equably over the whole of 
the sympathies. That which touches with 
strange commotion, and mere violence on the 
heart, but leaves no image there, seems to vul¬ 
gar spirits more potent than the faculty which 
applies to it all perfect figures, and leaves them 
to sink gently into its fleshly tablets to remain 
there for ever. Yet, surely, that which merely 
shakes is not equal even in power to that 
which impresses. The wild disjointed part 
may be more amazing to a diseased perception 
lhan the well-compacted whole; but it is the 
nice balancing of properties, the soft blending 
of shades, and the all-pervading and recon¬ 
ciling light shed over the harmonious imagina¬ 
tion, which take off the sense of rude strength 
that alone is discernible in its naked elements. 
Is there more of heavenly power in seizing 
from among the tumult of chaos and eternal 
night, strange and fearful abortions, or in 
brooding over the vast abyss, and making it 
pregnant with life and glory and joy? Is it 
the higher exercise of human faculties to re¬ 
present the frightful discordances of passion, 
or to show the grandeurs of humanity in that 
majestic repose which is at once an anticipa¬ 
tion and a proof of its eternal destiny? Is 
transitory vice—the mere accident of the spe¬ 
cies—and those vices too which are the rarest 
and most appalling of all its accidents—or 
that good which is its essence and which never 
can perish, fittest for the uses of the bard? 
Shall he desire to haunt the caves which lie 
lowest on the banks of Acheron, or the soft 
bowers watered by “ Siloa’s brook that flows 
fast by the oracle of God?” 

Mr. Maturin gave decisive indications of a 
morbid sensibility and a passionate eloquence 
out-running his imaginative faculties, in the 
commencement of his literary career. His 
first romance, the “ Family of Montorio,” is 
one of the wildest and strangest of all “false 
creations proceeding from the heat-oppressed 
brain.” It is for the most part a tissue of mag¬ 
nificent yet unappalling horrors. Its great 
faults as a work of amusement, are the long 
and unrelieved series of its gloomy and mar¬ 
vellous scenes, and the unsatisfactory expla¬ 
nation of them all, as arising from mere hu¬ 
man agency. This last error he borrowed 
from Mrs. Ratcliffe, to whom he is far inferior 
in the economy of terrors, but whom he greatly 
transcends in the dark majesty of his style. 
As his events are far more wild and wondrous 
than hers, so his development is necessarily 
far more incredible and vexatious. There is, 


in this story, a being whom we are long led 
to believe is not of this world—who speaks 
in the tones of the sepulchre, glides through 
the thickest walls, haunts two distant brothers 
in their most secret retirements through 
their strange wanderings, leads one of his 
victims to a scene which he believes infer¬ 
nal, and there terrifies him with sights of the 
wildest magic—and who after all this, and 
after really vindicating to the fancy his claim 
to the supernatural by the fearful cast of his 
language—is discovered to be a low impostor, 
who has produced all by the aid of poor tricks 
and secret passages! Where is the policy of 
this? Unless, by his power, the author had 
given a credibility to magic through four-fifths 
of his work, it never could have excited any 
feeling but that of impatience or of scorn. 
And when we have surrendered ourselves 
willingly to his guidance—when we have 
agreed to believe impossibilities at his bidding 
—why does he reward our credence with de¬ 
rision, and tacitly reproach us for not having 
detected his idle mockeries ? After all, too, 
the reason is no more satisfied than the fancy; 
for it would be a thousand times easier to be¬ 
lieve in the possibility of spiritual influences, 
than in a long chain of mean contrivances, no 
one of which could ever succeed. The first is 
but one wonder, and that one to which our na¬ 
ture has a strange leaning; the last are num¬ 
berless, and have nothing to reconcile them to 
our thoughts. In submitting to the former, 
we contentedly lay aside our reasoning facul¬ 
ties ; in - approaching the latter our reason 
itself is appealed to at the moment when it is 
insulted. Great talent is, however, unques¬ 
tionably exhibited in this singular story. A 
stern justice breathes solemnly through all 
the scenes in the devoted castle. “Fate.sits 
on its dark battlements, and frowns.” There 
is a spirit of deep philosophy in the tracing 
of the gradual influence of patricidal thoughts 
on the hearts of the brothers, which would 
finally exhibit the danger of dallying with evil 
fancies, if the subject were not removed so far 
from all ordinary temptations. Some of the 
scenes of horror, if they were not accumulated 
until they wear out their impression, would 
produce an effect inferior to none in the works 
of Ratcliffe or of Lewis. The scene in which 
Flippo escapes from the assassins, deserves to 
be ranked with the robber-scenes in the Monk 
and Count Fathom. The diction of the whole 
is rich and energetic—not, indeed, flowing in 
a calm beauty which may glide on for ever— 
but impetuous as a mountain torrent, which, 
though it speedily passes away, leaves behind 
it no common spoils— 

“Depositing upon the silent shore 
Of memory, images and gentle thoughts 
Which cannot die, and will not be destroyed.” 

“The Wild Irish Boy” is, on the whole, in¬ 
ferior to Montorio, though it served to give a 
farther glimpse into the vast extent of the 
author’s resources. “The Milesian” is, per¬ 
haps, the most extraordinary of his romances. 
There is a bleak and misty grandeur about it, 
which, in spite of its glaring defects, sustains 
for it an abiding-place in the soul. Yet never, 
perhaps, was there a more unequal production— 




RYMER ON TRAGEDY. 


21 


alternately exhibiting the grossest plagiarism 
and the wildest originality—now swelling into 
offensive bombast, and anon disclosing the 
simplest majesty of nature, fluctuating with 
inconstant ebb between the sublime and the 
ridiculous, the delicate and the revolting. 
“ Women, or Pour et Contre,” is less unequal, 
but we think, on the whole, less interesting 
than the author’s earlier productions. He 
should not venture, as in this work he has 
done, into the ordinary paths of existence. 
His persons, if not cast in a high and heroic 
mould, have no stamp of reality upon them. 
The reader of this work, though often dazzled 
and delighted, has a painful feeling that the 
characters are shadowy and unreal, like that 
which is experienced in dreams. They are 
unpleasant and tantalizing likenesses, ap¬ 
proaching sufficiently near to the true to make 
us feel what they would be and lament what 
they are. Eva, Zaira, the manaic mother, and 
the group of Calvinists,have all a resemblance 
to nature—and sometimes to nature at its most 
passionate or its sweetest—but they look as at 
a distance from us, as though between us and 
them there were some veil, or discolouring 
medium, to baffie and perplex us. Still the 
novel is a splendid work; and gives the feel¬ 
ing that its author has “riches fineless” in 
store, which might delight as well as astonish 
the world, if he would cease to be their slave, 
and become their master. 

In the narrow boundaries of the Drama the 
redundancies of Mr. Maturin have been neces¬ 
sarily corrected. In this walk, indeed, there 
seems reason to believe that his genius would 
have grown purer, as it assumed a severer 
attitude; and that he would have sought to 
attain high and true passion, and lofty imagi¬ 
nation, had he not been seduced by the admi¬ 
ration unhappily lavished on Lord Byron’s 
writings. The feverish strength, the singular 
blending of good and evil, and the spirit of 
moral paradox, displayed in these works, were 
congenial with his tastes, and aroused in him 
the desire to imitate. “Bertram,” his first and 
most successful tragedy, is a fine piece of 
writing, wrought out of a nauseous tale, and 


rendered popular, not by its poetical beauties, 
but by the violence with which it jars on the 
sensibilities, and awakens the sluggish heart 
from its lethargy. “ Manuel,” its successor, 
feebler, though in the same style, excited little 
attention, and less sympathy. In “ Fredolpho,” 
the author, as though he had resolved to sting 
the public into a sense of his power, crowded 
together characters of such matchless depra¬ 
vity, sentiments of such a demoniac cast, and 
events of such gratuitous horror, that the 
moral taste of the audience, injured as it had 
been by the success of similar works, felt the 
insult, and rose up indignantly against it. Yet 
in this piece were passages of a soft and 
mournful beauty, breathing a tender air of 
romance, which led us bitterly to regret that 
the poet chose to “ embower the spirit of a 
fiend, in mortal paradise of such sweet” song. 

We do not, however despair even yet of the 
regeneration of our author’s taste. There has 
always been something of humanity to redeem 
those works in which his genius has been 
most perverted. There is no deliberate sneer¬ 
ing at the disinterested and the pure—no cold 
derision of human hopes—no deadness to the 
lonely and the loving, in his writings. His 
error is that of a hasty trusting to feverish im 
pulses, not of a malignant design. There is 
far more of the soul of goodness in his evil 
things, than in those of the noble bard whose 
example has assisted to mislead him. He does 
not, indeed, know so well how to place his un¬ 
natural characters in imposing attitudes—to 
work up his morbid sensibilities for sale—or 
to “build the lofty rhyme” on shattered prin¬ 
ciples, and the melancholy fragments of hope. 
But his diction is more rich, his fancy is more 
fruitful, and his compass of thought and feel¬ 
ing more extensive. Happy shall we be to see 
him doing justice at last to his powers— 
studying not to excite the wonder of a few 
barren readers or spectators, but to live in the 
hearts of the good of future times—and, to this 
high end, leaving discord for harmony, the 
startling for the true, and the evil which, how¬ 
ever potent, is but for a season, for the pure 
and the holy which endure for ever 1 


REVIEW OF RYMER’S WORKS ON TRAGEDY. 

[Retrospective Review.] 


These are very curious and edifying works. 
The author (who was the compiler of the Foe- 
dera') appears to have been a man of considera¬ 
ble acuteness, maddened by a furious zeal for 
the honour of tragedy. He lays down the most 
fantastical rules for the composition which he 
chiefly reverses, and argues on them as “ truths 
of holy writ.” He criticises Shakspeare as 
one invested with authority to sit in judgment 
on his powers, and passes on him as decisive 
a sentence of condemnation, as ever was 
awarded against a friendless poet by a Re¬ 


viewer. We will select a few passages from 
his work, which may be consolatory to modern 
authors and useful to modern critics. 

The chief weight of Mr. Rymer’s critical 
vengeance is wreaked on Othello. After a slight 
sketch of the plot, he proceeds at once to speak 
of the moral , which he seems to regard as of 
the first importance in tragedy. 

“ Whatever rubs or difficulty may stick on 
the bark, the moral use of this fable is very in¬ 
structive. First, this may be a caution to all 
maidens of quality, how, without their parents’ 





22 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


consent, they run away with blackamoors. 
Secondly, this may be a warning to all good 
wives, that they look well to their linen. 
Thirdly, this maybe a lesson to husbands, that 
before their jealousy be tragical, the proofs may 
be mathematical.” 

Our author then proceeds happily to satirize 
Othello’s colour. He observes, that “Shaks- 
peare was accountable both to the eyes and 
to the ears.” On this point we think his ob¬ 
jection is not without reason. We agree with 
an excellent modern critic in the opinion, that 
though a reader may sink Othello’s colour in 
his mind, a spectator can scarcely avoid losing 
the mind in the colour. But Mr. Rymer pro¬ 
ceeds thus to characterize Othello’s noble ac¬ 
count to the Senate of his whole course of 
love. 

“This was the charm, this was the philtre, 
the love-powder that took the daughter of this 
noble Venetian. This was sufficient to make 
the Blackamoor white, and reconcile all, though 
there had been a cloven foot into the bargain. 
A meaner woman might as soon be taken by 
Aqua Tetrachymagogon.” 

The idea of Othello’s elevation to the rank 
of a general, stings Mr. Rymer almost to mad¬ 
ness. He regards the poet’s offence as a kind 
of misprision of treason. 

‘•'The character of the state (of Venice) is 
to employ strangers in their Avars; but shall a 
poet thence fancy that they will set a negro to 
be their general; or trust a Moor to defend 
them against the Turk] With us, a Blacka¬ 
moor might rise to be a trumpeter, but Shaks- 
peare would not have him less than a lieute¬ 
nant-general. With us, a Moor might marry 
some little drab or small-coal wench; Shaks- 
peare would provide him the daughter and heir 
of some great lord, or privy-counsellor; and 
all the town should reckon it a very suitable 
match : yet the English are not bred up with 
that hatred and aversion to the Moors as the 
Venetians, who suffer by a perpetual hostility 
from them, 

‘Littora littoribus contraria.’ ” 

Our author is as severe on Othello’s cha¬ 
racter, as on his exaltation and colour. 

“Othello is made a Venetian general. We 
see nothing done by him, nor related concern¬ 
ing him, that comports Avith the condition of a 
general, or, indeed, of a man, unless the killing 
himself to avoid a death the laAV Avas about to 
inflict upon him. When his jealousy had 
wrought him up*to a resolution of his taking 
revenge for the supposed injury, he sets Iago 
to the fighting part to kill Cassio, and chooses 
himself to murder the silly Avoman, his wife, 
that was like to make no resistance.” 

Mr. Rymer next undertakes to resent the 
affront put on the army by the making Iago a 
soldier. 

“ But what is most intolerable is Iago. He 
is no Blackamoor soldier, so Ave may be sure 
he should be like other soldiers of our acquaint¬ 
ance; yet never in tragedy, nor in comedy, nor 
in nature, was a soldier Avith his character;— 
take it in the author’s oAvn Avords : 

-some eternal villain, 

Some busy and insinuating rogue, 

Some cogging, cozening slave, to get some office. 


“ Horace describes a soldier otherwise,—-* 
Impygcr, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer. 

“Shakspeare kneAv his character of Iago 
Avas inconsistent. In this very play he pro¬ 
nounces, 

‘ If thou deliver more or less than truth, 

Thou art no soldier.’- 

« This he kneAv, but to entertain the audience 
Avith something neAv and surprising against 
common sense and nature, he Avould pass upon 
us a close, dissembling, false, insinuating ras¬ 
cal, instead of an open-hearted, frank, plain¬ 
dealing soldier, a character constantly Avorn by 
them for some thousands of years in the Avorld.” 

Against “ the gentle lady married to the 
Moor,” Mr. Rymer cherishes a most exemplary 
hatred. He seems to labour for terms strong 
enough to express the antipathy and scorn he 
bears her. The folloA\ r ing are some of the 
daintiest: 

“ There is nothing in the noble Desdemona, 
that is not b£low any country kitchen-maid 
Avith us.”—“No woman bred out of a pig-stye 
could talk so meanly.” 

Yet is Mr. Rymer no less enraged at her 
death than at her life. 

“Here (he exclaims in an agony of passion) 
a noble Venetian lady is to be murdered by 
our poet, in sober sadness, purely for being 
a fool. No pagan poet but Avould have found 
some machine for her deliverance. Pegasus 
Avould have strained hard to have brought old 
Perseus on his back, time enough to rescue 
this Andromeda from so foul a monster. Has 
our Christian poetry no generosity, no bowels? 
Ha, ha, Sir Launcelot! Ha, Sir George ! Will 
no ghost leave the shades for us in extremity, 
to saA r e a distressed damsel?” 

On the “ expression ,” that is, Ave presume, the 
poetry of the work, Mr. Rymer does not think 
it necessary to dAvell; though he admits that 
“ the verses rumbling in our ears, are of good 
use to help off the action.” On those of Shaks¬ 
peare he passes this summary judgment: “In 
the neighing of a horse, or in the growling of 
a mastiff, there is a meaning, there is as lively 
expression, and may I say more humanity, 
than many times in the tragical flights of 
Shakspeare. Having settled this trivial point, 
he invites the reader “ to step among the scenes, 
to observe the conduct on this tragedy.” 

In examining the first scene of Othello, our 
critic Aveighlily reprehends the sudden and 
startling manner in Avhich Iago and Roderigo 
inform Brabantio of his daughter’s elopement 
Avith the Moor. He regards their abruptness 
as an unpardonable violation of decorum, and, 
by Avay of contrast to its rudeness, informs us, 
that 

“In former days there Avont to be kept at the 
courts of princes somebody in a fool’s coat, 
that in pure simplicity might let slip something, 
Avhich made Avay for the ill news, and blunted 
the shock, which othenvise might have come 
too violent on the party.” 

Mr. Rymer sIioavs the council of Venice no 
quarter. He thus daringly scrutinizes their 
proceedings. 

“By their conduct and manner of talk, a 
body must strain hard to fancy the scene at 
Venice, and not rather at some of our Cinque 






RYMER ON TRAGEDY. 


23 


ports, where the baily and his fishermen are 
knocking their heads together on account of 
some whale; or some terrible broil on the 
coast. But to show them true Venetians, the 
maritime affairs stick not on their hand; the 
public may sink or swim. They will sit up 
all night to hear a Doctors’ Commons matri¬ 
monial cause; and have the merits of the 
cause laid open to ’em, that they may decide 
it before they stir. What can be pleaded to 
keep awake their attention so wonderfully 1” 

Here the critic enters into a fitting abuse of 
Othello’s defence to the senate; expresses his 
disgust at the “ eloquence which kept them up 
all night,” and his amaze at their apathy, not¬ 
withstanding the strangeness of the marriage. 
He complains, that 

“Instead of starting at the prodigy, every 
one is familiar with Desdemona, as if he were 
her own natural father; they rejoice in her 
good fortune, and wish their own daughters as 
hopefully married. Should the poet (he con¬ 
tinues) have provided such a husband for an 
only daughter of any peer in England, the 
Blackamoor must have changed his skin to 
look our House of Lords in the face.” 

Our critic next complains, that, in the second 
act, the poet shows the action (he “knows not 
how many leagues off”) in the island of Cy¬ 
prus, without “our Bayes” (as he pleasantly 
denominates Shakspeare) having made any 
provision of transport ships for the audience. 
The first scene in Cyprus is then “cut up” in 
a way which might make the most skilful of 
modern reviewers turn pale with envy. After 
noticing the preliminary dialogue, Mr. Rymer 
observes, “now follows a long rabble of Jack 
Pudden farce between Iago and Desdemona, 
that runs on with all the little plays, jingle, 
and trash, below the patience of any country 
kitchen maid with her sweetheart. The Ve¬ 
netian Donna is hard put to it for pastime; 
and this is all when they are newly got on 
shore from a dismal tempest, and when every 
moment she might expect to hear her Lord, 
(as she calls him,) that she runs so mad after, 
is arrived or lost.” Our author, therefore, 
accuses Shakspeare of “ unhallowing the 
theatre, profaning the name of tragedy, and 
instead of representing men and manners, 
turning all morality, good-sense, and hu¬ 
manity, into mockery and derision.” 

Mr. Rymer contends, that Desdemona’s 
solicitations for Cassio were in themselves 
more than enough to rouse Othello’s jealousy. 
“Iago can now (he observes) only actum 
agere, and vex the audience with a nauseous 
repetition.” This remark introduces the fol¬ 
lowing criticism on the celebrated scene in 
the third act, between Othello and Iago, which 
is curious, not only as an instance of perverted 
reasoning, but as it shows that, in the perform¬ 
ance, some great histrionic power must have 
been formerly exerted, not unlike the energy 
of which we, in witnessing this tragedy, have 
been spectators. 

“ Whence comes it, then, that this is the top 
scene; the scene that raises Othello above all 
other tragedies at our theatres 1 it is purely 
from the action; from the mops and the mows, 
the grimace, the grins, and gesticulation. Such 


scenes as this have made all the world run 
after Harlequin and Scaramoucio. 

“The several degrees of action were amongst 
the ancients distinguished by the cothurnus, 
the soccus, and the planipes. Had this scene 
been represented at Old Rome, Othello and 
Iago must have quitted their buskins; they 
must have played barefoot; for the spectators 
would not have been content without seeing 
their podometry, and the jealousy work out 
at the very toes of them. Words, be they 
Spanish or Polish, or any inarticulate sound, 
have the same effect: they can only serve to 
distinguish, and, as it were, beat time to the 
action. But here we see a known language 
does wofully encumber and clog the operation; 
as either forced, or heavy, or trifling, or in¬ 
coherent, or improper, or most improbable. 
When no words interpose to spoil the conceit, 
every one interprets, as he likes best; so in 
that memorable dispute between Panurge and 
our English philosopher in Rabelais, performed 
without a word speaking, the theologians, 
physicians, and surgeons, made one inference; 
the lawyers, civilians, and canonists, drew 
another conclusion more to their mind.” 

Mr. Rymer thus objects to the superlative 
villany of Iago, on his advising Desdemona’s 
murder. 

“Iago had some pretence to be discontent 
with Othello and Cassio, and what passed 
hitherto was the operation of revenge. Des¬ 
demona had never done him any harm; al¬ 
ways kind to him, and to his wife; was his 
countrywoman, a dame of quality. For him 
to abet her murder, shows nothing of a soldier, 
nothing of a man, nothing of nature in it. 
The ordinary of Newgate never had the like 
monster to pass under his examination. Can 
it be any diversion to see a rogue beyond what 
the devil ever finished 1 or would it be any in¬ 
struction to an audience] Iago could desire 
no better than to set Cassio and Othello, his 
two enemies, by the ears together, so that he 
might have been revenged on them both at 
once; and choosing for his own share the 
murder of Desdemona, he had the opportunity 
to play booty, and save the poor harmless 
wretch. But the poet must do ever}’’ thing by 
contraries; to surprise the audience still with 
something Jiorrible and prodigious, beyond 
any human imagination. At this rate, he 
must outdo the devil, to be a poet in the rank 
with Shakspeare.” 

Mr. Rymer is decorously enraged, to think 
that the tragedy should turn on a handkerchief. 
“ Why,” he asks in virtuous indignation, “was 
not this called the tragedy of the handkerchief I 
what can be more absurd than (as Quintilian 
expresses it) in parvibus (sic) litibus has tragedias 
movcre ? We have heard of Fortunatus, his 
purse, and of the invisible cloak long ago 
worn thread-bare, and stowed up in the ward¬ 
robe of obsolete romances; one might think 
that were a fitter place for this handkerchief 
than that it, at this time of day, be worn on the 
stage, to raise everywhere all this clutter and 
turmoil.” And again, “ the handkerchief is so 
remote a trifle, no booby on this side Mauritania 
could make any consequence from it.” 

Our author suggests a felicitous alteration 





24 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


of the catastrophe of Othello. He proposes, 
that the handkerchief, when lost, should have 
been folded in the bridal couch; and when 
Othello was stifling Desdemona, 

“ The fairy napkin might have started up to 
disarm his fury, and stop his ungracious 
mouth. Then might she (in a trance for fear) 
have lain as dead. Then might he, (believing 
her dead.) touched with remorse, have honestly 
cut his own throat, by the good leave, and with 
the applause, of all the spectators ; who might 
thereupon have gone home with a quiet mind, 
admiring the beauty of providence, fairly and 
truly represented on the theatre/’ 

The following is the summing up and catas¬ 
trophe of this marvellous criticism: 

“What can remain with the audience to 
carry home with them from this sort of poetry, 
for their use and edification ? How can it 
work, unless (instead of settling the mind and 
purging our passions) to delude our senses, 
disorder our thoughts, addle our brain, pervert 
our affections, hair our imaginations, corrupt 
our appetite—and fill our head with vanity, 
confusion, tintamarra , and jingle-jangle, be¬ 
yond what all the parish clerks of London, 
with their Old Testament farces and interludes, 
in Richard the Second’s time, could ever pre¬ 
tend to 1 Our only hopes, for the good of their 
souls, can be that these people go to the play¬ 
house as they do to church—to sit still, look 
on one another, make no reflection, nor mind 
the play more than they would a sermon. 

“ There is in this play some burlesque, some 
humour, and ramble of comical wit, some 
show, and some mimicry to divert the specta¬ 
tors ; but the tragical part is clearly none 
other than a bloody farce, without salt or 
savor.” 

Our author’s criticism on Julius Ccesar is very 
scanty, compared with that of Othello, but it is 
not less decisive. Indeed, his classical zeal 
here sharpens his critical rage; and he is in¬ 
censed against Shakspeare, not only as offend¬ 
ing the dignity of the tragic muse, but the 
memory of the noblest Romans. “ He might,” 
exclaims the indignant critic, “ be familiar with 
Othello and Iago, as his own natural acquaint¬ 
ance, but Ctesar and Brutus were above his 
conversation; to put them in fools’ coats, and 
make them Jack Puddens in the Shakspeare 
dress, is a sacrilege beyond any thing in Spel- 
man. The truth is, this author’s head was 
full of villanous, unnatural images—and his¬ 
tory has furnished him with great names, 
thereby to recommend them to the world, by 
writing over them— This is Brutus, this is Cicero, 
this is CcesarT He affirms, “ that the language 
•Shakspeare puts into the mouth of Brutus 
would not suit or be convenient, unless from 
some son of the shambles, or some natural 
offspring of the butchery.” He abuses the 
poet for making the conspirators dispute about 
day-break—seriously chides him for not allow¬ 
ing the noble Brutus a watch-candle in his 
chamber on this important night, rather than 
puzzling his man, Lucius, to grope in the 
dark for a flint and tinder-box to get the taper 
lighted—speaks of the quarrel scene between 
Brutus and Cassius, as that in which “they 
are to play a prize, a trial of skill in huffing 


and swaggering like two drunken Hectors of 
a two-penny reckoning.” And finally, allud¬ 
ing to the epilogue of Laberius, forced by the 
emperor to become an actor, he thus sums up 
lis charges: 

“ This may show with what indignity our 
ooet treats the noblest Romans. But there is 
no other cloth in his wardrobe. Every one 
must wear a fool’s coat that comes to be 
dressed by him; nor is he more civil to the 
ladies—Portia, in good manners, might have 
challenged more respect; she that shines a 
glory of the first magnitude in the gallery of 
heroic dames, is with our poet scarce one re¬ 
move from a natural; she is the own cousin- 
german of one piece, the very same imperti¬ 
nent silly flesh and blood with Desdemona. 
Shakspeare’s genius lay for comedy and hu¬ 
mour. In tragedy he appears quite out of his 
element; his brains are turned—he raves and 
rambles without any coherence, any spark of 
reason, or any rule to control him, to set 
bounds to his phrensy.” 

One truth, though the author did not under¬ 
stand it, is told in this critic on Julius Ccesar; 
that Shakspeare’s “senators and his orators 
had their learning and education at the same 
school, be they Venetians, Ottamites, or noble 
Romans.” They drew, in their golden urns, 
from the deep fountain of humanity, those liv¬ 
ing waters which lose not their sweetness in 
the changes of man’s external condition. 

These attacks on Shakspeare are very curi¬ 
ous, as evincing how gradual has been the in¬ 
crease of his fame. Their whole tone shows 
that the author was not advancing what he 
thought the world would regard as paradoxical 
or sti'ange. He speaks as one with authority 
to decide. We look now on his work amazedly; 
and were it put forth by a writer of our times, 
should regard it as “the very ecstasy of mad¬ 
ness.” Such is the lot of genius. However 
small the circle of cotemporary admirers, it 
must “gather fame” as time rolls on. It ap¬ 
peals to feelings which cannot alter. The minds 
who once have deeply felt it, can never lose 
the impression at first made upon them—they 
transmit it to others, by whom it is extended 
to those who are worthy to treasure it. Its 
stability and duration at iength awaken the at¬ 
tention of the world, which thus acknowledges 
the sanction of time, and professes an admira¬ 
tion for the author, which it only feels for his 
name. We should not, however, have thus 
dwelt on the attacks of Rymer, had we re¬ 
garded them merely as objects of wonder, or 
as proofs of the partial influence of Shaks¬ 
peare’s genius. They are far from deserving 
unmingled scorn. They display, at least, an 
honest, unsophisticated hatred, which is better 
than the maudlin admiration of Shakspeare, 
expressed by those who were deluded by Ire¬ 
land’s forgeries. Their author has a hearti¬ 
ness, an earnestness almost romantic, which 
we cannot despise, though directed against our 
idol. With a singular obtuseness to poetry, 
he has a chivalpic devotion to all that he re¬ 
gards as excellent and grand. He looks on the 
supposed errors of the poet as moral crimes. 
He confounds fiction with fact—grows warm 
in defence of shadows—feels a violation of 



RYMER ON TRAGEDY. 


25 


poetical justice, as a wrong conviction by a 
mry—moves a habeas corpus for all damsels 
imprisoned in romance—and, if the bard kills 
those of his characters who deserve to live, 
pronounces judgment on him as in case of 
felony, without benefit of clergy. He is the 
Don Quixote of criticism. Like the hero of 
Cervantes, he is roused to avenge fictitious 
injuries, and would demolish the scenic exhi¬ 
bition in his disinterested rage. In one sense 
he does more honour to the poet than any 
other writer, for he seems to regard him as an 
arbiter of life and death—responsible only to 
the critic for the administration of his powers. 

Mr. Rymer has his own stately notions of 
what is proper for tragedy. He is zealous for 
poetical justice; and as he thinks that vice 
cannot be punished too severely, and yet that 
the poet ought to leave his victims objects of 
pity, he protests against the introduction of 
very wicked characters. “ Therefore,” says 
he, “among the ancients we find no malefac¬ 
tors of this kind ; a wilful murderer is, with 
them, as strange and unknown as a parricide 
to the old Romans. Yet need we not fancy 
that they were 'squeamish, or unacquainted 
with many of those great lumping crimes in 
that age; when we remember their CEdipus, 
Orestes, or Medea. But they took care to wash 
the viper, to cleanse away the venom, and with 
such art to prepare the morsel; they made it 
all junket to the taste, and all physic in the 
operation.” 

Our author understands exactly the balance 
of power in the affections. He would dispose 
of all the poet’s characters to a hair, according 
to his own rules of fitness. He would marshal 
them in array as in a procession, and mark 
out exactly what each ought to do or suffer. 
According to him, so much of presage and no 
more should be given—such a degree of sor¬ 
row, and no more ought a character endure; 
vengeance should rise precisely to a given 
height, and be executed by a certain appointed 
hand. He would regulate the conduct of ficti¬ 
tious heroes as accurately as of real beings, 
and often reasons well on his own poetic deca¬ 
logue. “Amintor,” says he, (speaking of a 
character in the Maid's Tragedy ) “should have 
begged the king’s pardon; should have suffered 
all the racks and tortures a tyrant could inflict; 
and from Perillus’s bull should have still bel¬ 
lowed out that eternal truth, that his promise was 
to be kept —that he is true to Aspatia, that he 
dies for his mistress! Then would his memory 
have been precious and sweet to after ages; 
and the midsummer maidens would have of¬ 
fered their garlands all at his grave.” 

Mr. Rymer is an enthusiastic champion for 
the poetical prerogatives of kings. No cour¬ 
tier ever contended more strenuously for their 
divine right in real life, than he for their pre¬ 
eminence in tragedy. “We are to presume,” 
observes he gravely, “the greatest virtues, 
where we find the highest rewards; and though 
it is not necessary that all heroes should be 
kings, yet undoubtedly all crowned heads, by 
poetical right, are heroes. This character is a 
flower, a prerogative, so certain, go indispen¬ 
sably annexed to the crown, as by no poet, or 
parliament of poets, ever to be invaded.” 


Thus does he lay down the rules of life and 
death for his regal domain of tragedy: “If I 
mistake not, in poetry no woman is to kill a 
man, except her quality gives her the advan¬ 
tage above him; nor is a servant to kill the 
master, nor a private man, much less a sub¬ 
ject to kill a king, nor on the contrary. Poeti¬ 
cal decency will not suffer death to be dealt to 
each other, by such persons whom the laws 
of duel allow not to enter the lists together.” 
He admits, however, that “ there may be cir¬ 
cumstances that alter the case: as where there 
is sufficient ground of partiality in an au 
dience, either upon the account of religion (as 
Rinaldo or Riccardo, in Tasso, might kill Soli- 
man, or any other Turkish king or great Sul¬ 
tan) or else in favour of our country, for then 
a private English hero might overcome a king 
of some rival nation.” How pleasant a mas¬ 
ter of the ceremonies is he in the regions of 
fiction—regulating the niceties of murder like 
the decorums of a dance—with an amiable 
preference for his own religion and country! 

These notions, however absurd, result from 
an indistinct sense of a peculiar dignity and 
grandeur essential to tragedy—and surely this 
feeling was not altogether deceptive. Some 
there are, indeed, who trace the emotions of 
strange delight which tragedy awakens, en¬ 
tirely to the love of strong excitement, which 
is gratified by spectacles of anguish. Accord¬ 
ing to their doctrine, the more nearly the re¬ 
presentation of sorrow approaches reality, the 
more intense will be the gratification of the 
spectator. Thus Burke has gravely asserted, 
that if the audience at a tragedy were in¬ 
formed of an execution about to take place in 
the neighbourhood, they would leave the thea¬ 
tre to witness it. We believe that experience 
does not warrant a speculation so dishonour¬ 
able to our nature. How few, except those of 
the grossest minds, are ever attracted by the 
punishment of capital offenders! Even of 
those whom the dreadful infliction draws to¬ 
gether, how many are excited merely by curi¬ 
osity, and a desire to view the last mortal 
agony, which in a form more or less terrible 
all must endure! We think that if, during 
the representation of a tragedy, the au¬ 
dience were compelled to feel vividly that a 
fellow-creature was struggling in the agonies 
of a violent death, many of them would retire 
—but not to the scene of horror. The reality 
of human suffering would come too closely 
home to their hearts, to permit their enjoy¬ 
ment of the fiction. How often, during the 
scenic exhibition of intolerable agony—uncon¬ 
secrated and unredeemed—have we been com¬ 
pelled to relieve our hearts from a weight too 
heavy for endurance, by calling to mind that 
the woes are fictitious! It cannot be the high¬ 
est triumph of an author, whose aim is to 
heighten the enjoyments of life, that he forces 
us, in our own defence, to escape from his 
power. If the pleasure derived from tragedy 
were merely occasioned by the love of excite¬ 
ment, the pleasure would be in proportion to 
the depth and the reality of the sorrow. Then 
would The Gamester be more pathetic than 
Othello , and Isabella call forth deeper admira¬ 
tion than Macbeth or Lear. Then would George 
C 



26 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


Barnwell be the loftiest tragedy, and the New¬ 
gate Calendar the sweetest collection of pathetic 
tales. To name those instances, is sufficiently 
to refute the position on which they are 
founded. 

Equally false is the opinion, that the plea¬ 
sure derived from tragedy arises from a source 
of individual security, while others are suffer¬ 
ing. There are no feelings more distantly 
removed from the selfish, than those which 
genuine tragedy awakens. We are carried at 
its representation out of ourselves, and “the 
ignorant present time,”—by earnest sympathy 
with the passions and the sorrows, not of our¬ 
selves, but of our nature. We feel our com¬ 
munity with the general heart of man. The 
encrustments of selfishness and low passion 
are rent asunder, and the warm tide of human 
sympathies gushes triumphantly from its 
secret and divine sources. 

It is not, then, in bringing sorrow home in 
its dreadful realities to our bosoms, nor in 
painting it so as to make us cling to our selfish 
gratifications with more earnest joy, that the 
tragic poet moves and enchants us. Grief is 
but the means—the necessary means indeed— 
by which he accomplishes his lofty purposes. 
The grander qualities of the soul cannot be 
developed—the deepest resources of comfort 
within it cannot be unveiled—the solemnities 
of its destiny cannot be shadowed forth—ex¬ 
cept in peril and in suffering. Hence peril and 
suffering become instruments of the Tragic 
Muse. But these are not, in themselves, those 
things which w r e delight to contemplate. Va¬ 
rious, indeed, yet most distinct from these, are 
the sources of that deep joy that tragedy pro¬ 
duces. Sometimes we are filled with a delight 
not dissimilar to that which the Laocoon ex¬ 
cites—an admiration of the more than mortal 
beauty of the attitudes and of the finishing— 
and even of the terrific sublimity of the folds 
in which the links of fate involve the charac¬ 
ters. When we look at that inimitable group, 
we do not merely rejoice in a sympathy with 
extreme suffering—but are enchanted with ten¬ 
der loveliness, and feel that the sense of dis¬ 
tress is softened by the exquisite touches of 
genius. Often, in tragedy, our hearts are ele¬ 
vated by thoughts “informed with nobleness” 
—by the view of heroic greatness of soul—by 
the contemplation of affections which death 
cannot conquer. It is not the depth of anguish 
which calls forth delicious tears—it is some 
sweet piece of self-denial—some touch of 
human gentleness, in the midst of sorrow— 
some “glorious triumph of exceeding love,” 
which suffuses our “subdued eyes,” and mel¬ 
lows our hearts. Death itself often becomes 
tne source of sublime consolations: seen 
through the poetical medium, it often seems to 
fall on the wretched “ softly and lightly, as a 
passing cloud.” It is felt as the blessed means 
of re-uniting faithful and ill-fated lovers—it is 
the pillow on whic i the long struggling patriot 
rests. Often it exhibits the noblest triumph of 
the spiritual over the material part of man. 
Tne intense ardour of a spirit that “ o’er-in- 
forrn’d its tenement of clay”—yet more quench¬ 
less in the last conflict, is felt to survive the 
struggle, and to. triumph even in the victory 


which power has achieved over its earthly 
frame. In short, it is the high duty of the 
tragic poet to exhibit humanity sublimest 
in its distresses—to dignify or to sweeten sor¬ 
row—to exhibit eternal energies wrestling with 
each other, or with the accidents of the world— 
and to disclose the depth and the immortality 
of the affections. He must represent humanity 
as a rock, beaten, and sometimes overspread, 
with the mighty waters of anguish, but still 
unshaken. We look to him for hopes, princi¬ 
ples, resting places of the soul—for emotions 
which dignify our passions, and consecrate 
our sorrows. A brief retrospect of tragedy 
will show, that in every age when it has tri¬ 
umphed, it has appealed not to the mere love 
of excitement, but to the perceptions of beauty 
in the soul—to the yearnings of the deepest 
affections—to the aspirations after grandeur 
and permanence, which never leave man even 
in his errors and afflictions. 

Nothing could be more dignified than the 
old tragedy of the Greeks. Its characters were 
demi-gods, or heroes; its subjects were often 
the destinies of those lines of the mighty, 
which had their beginning among the eldest 
deities. So far, in the development of their 
plots, were the poets from appealing to mere 
sensibility, that they scarcely deigned to 
awaken an anxious throb, or draw forth a 
human tear. In their works, we see the catas¬ 
trophe from the beginning, and feel its influence 
at every step, as w r e advance majestically along 
the solemn avenue which it closes. There is 
little struggle; the doom of the heroes is fixed 
on high, and they pass, in sublime composure, 
to fulfil their destiny. Their sorrows are awful, 
their deaths religious sacrifices to the power of 
Heaven. The glory that plays about their 
heads is the prognostic of their fate. A con¬ 
secration is shed over their brief and sad 
career, which takes away all the ordinary 
feelings of suffering. Their afflictions are 
sacred, their passions inspired by the gods, 
their fates prophesied in elder time, their deaths 
almost festal. All things are tinged with sanc¬ 
tity or with beauty in the Greek tragedies. 
Bodily pain is made sublime ; destitution and 
wretchedness are rendered sacred; and the 
very grove of the Furies is represented as 
ever fresh and green. How grand is the suf¬ 
fering of Prometheus, how sweet the resolution 
of Antigone, how appalling, yet how magnifi¬ 
cent the last vision of Cassandra, how recon¬ 
ciling and tender, yet how awful, the circum¬ 
stances attendant on the death of CEdipus! 
And how rich a poetic atmosphere do the 
Athenian poets breathe over all the creations 
of their genius! Their exquisite groups ap¬ 
pear in all the venerableness of hoar anti¬ 
quity; yet in the distinctness and in the bloom 
of unfading youth. All the human figures are 
seen, sublime in attitude, and exquisite in 
finishing; while, in the dim background, ap¬ 
pear the shapes of eldest gods, and the solemn 
abstractions of life, fearfully imbodied — 
“ Death the skeleton, and time the shadow !”— 
Surely there is something more in all this, than 
a vivid picture of the sad realities of our 
human existence. 

The Romans failed in tragedy, because their 




RYMER ON TRAGEDY. 


27 


.ove of mere excitement was too keen to per¬ 
mit them to enjoy it. They had “supped full 
of horrors.” Familiar with the thoughts of 
real slaughter, they could not endure the philo¬ 
sophic and poetic view of distress in which it 
is softened and made sacred. Their imagina¬ 
tions were too practical for a genuine poet to 
affect. Hence, in the plays*whicn bear the 
name of Seneca, horrors are heaped on hor¬ 
rors—the most unpleasing of the Greek fictions 
(as that of Medea) are re-written and made 
ghastly—and every touch that might redeem is 
carefully effaced by the poet. Still, the gran¬ 
deur of old tragedy is there—still “ the gorgeous 
pall eomes sweeping by”—still the dignity sur¬ 
vives, though the beauty has faded. 

In the productions of Shakspeare, doubtless, 
tragedy was divested of something of its external 
grandeur. The mythology of the ancient world 
had lost its.living charm. Its heroic forms 
remained, indeed, unimpaired in beauty or 
grace, in the distant regions of the imagination, 
but they could no longer occupy the foreground 
of poetry. Men required forms of flesh and 
blood, animated by human passion, and awak¬ 
ening human sympathy. Shakspeare, there¬ 
fore, sought for his materials nearer to common 
humanity than the elder bards. He took also, 
in each play, a far wider range than they had 
dared to occupy. He does not, therefore, con¬ 
vey so completely as they did one grand har¬ 
monious feeling, by each of his works. But 
who shall affirm, that the tragedy of Shaks¬ 
peare has not an elevation of its own, or that 
it produces pleasure only by exhibiting spec¬ 
tacles of varied anguish 1 The reconciling 
power of his imagination, and the genial influ¬ 
ences of his philosophy are ever softening and 
consecrating sorrow. He scatters the rainbow 
hues of fancy over objects in themselves repul¬ 
sive. He nicely developes the “ soul of good¬ 
ness in things evil,” to console and delight us. 
He blends all the most glorious imagery of na¬ 
ture with the passionate expressions of afflic¬ 
tion. He sometimes, in a single image, ex¬ 
presses an intense sentiment in all its depth, 
yet identifies it with the widest and the grandest 
objects of creation. Thus he makes Timon, 
in the bitterness of his soul, set up his tomb 
on the beached shore, that the wave of the 
ocean may once a day cover him with its em¬ 
bossed foam—expanding an individual feel¬ 
ing into the extent of the vast and eternal sea; 
yet making us feel it as more intense, from the 
very sublimity of the image. The mind can 
always rest without anguish on his catastro- 
phies, however mournful. Sad as the story of 
Romeo and Juliet is, it does not lacerate or 
tear the heart, but relieves it of its weight by 
awakening sweet tears. We shrink not at 
their tomb, which we feel has set a seal on 
their loves and virtues, but almost long with 
them there “to set up our everlasting rest.” 
We do not feel unmingled agony at the death 
of Lear; when his aged heart, which has been 
beaten so fearfully, is at rest—and his withered 
frame, late o’er-informed with terrific energy, 
reposes with his pious child. We are not 
shocked and harrowed even when Hamlet falls; 
for we feel that he is unfit for the bustle of this 
world, and his own gentle contemplations on 


death have deprived it of its terrors. In Shaks¬ 
peare, the passionate is always steeped in the 
beautiful. Sometimes he diverts sorrow with 
tender conceits, which, like little fantastic 
rocks, break its streams into sparkling cas¬ 
cades and circling eddies. And when it must 
flow on, deep and still, he bends over it 
branching foliage and graceful flowers—whose 
leaves are seen in its dark bosom, all of one 
sober and harmonious hue—but in their clearest 
form and most delicate proportions. 

The other dramatists of Shakspeare’s age, 
deprived, like him, of classical resources, and 
far inferior to him in imagination and wisdom, 
strove to excite a deep interest by the wildness 
of their plots, and the strangeness of the inci¬ 
dents with which their scenes were crowded. 
Their bloody tragedies are, however, often 
relieved by passages of exquisite sweetness. 
Their terrors, not humanized like those of 
Shakspeare, are yet far removed from the 
vulgar or disgusting. Sometimes, amidst the 
gloom of continued crimes, which often follow 
each other in stern and awful succession, are 
fair pictures of more than earthly virtue, tinted 
with the dews of heaven, and encircled with 
celestial glories. The scene in The Broken 
Heart , where Calantha, amidst the festal crowd, 
receives the news of the successive deaths of 
those dearest to her in the world, yet dances 
on—and that in which she composedly settles 
all the affairs of her empire, and then dies 
smiling by the body of her- contracted lord — 
are in the loftiest spirit of tragedy. They 
combine the dignity and majestic suffering of 
the ancient drama, with the intenseness of the 
modern. The last scene unites beauty, tender¬ 
ness, and grandeur, in one harmonious and 
stately picture—as sublime as any single scene 
in the tragedies of ^Eschylus or Shakspeare. 

Of the succeeding tragedians of England, 
the frigid imitators of the French Drama, it is 
necessary to say but little. The elevation of 
their plays is only on the stilts of declamatory 
language. The proportions and symmetry of 
their plots are but an accordance with arbitrary 
rules. Yet was there no reason to fear that 
the sensibilities of their audience should be 
too strongly excited, without the alleviations of 
fancy or of grandeur, because their sorrows 
are unreal, turgid, and fantastic. Cato is a 
classical petrifaction. Its tenderest expression 
is, “Be sure you place his urn near mine,” 
which comes over us like a sentiment frozen 
in the utterance. Congreve’s Mourning Bride 
has a greater air of magnificence than most 
tragedies of his or of the succeeding time; 
but its declamations fatigue, and its labyrinthine 
plot perplexes. Venice Preserved is cast in the 
mould of dignity and of grandeur; but the 
characters want nobleness, the poetry coher¬ 
ence, and the sentiments truth. 

The plays of Hill, Hughes, Philips, Murphy, 
and Rowe, are dialogues, sometimes ill and 
sometimes well written—occasionally stately 
in numbers,\>ut never touching the soul. It 
would be unjust to mention Young and Thom 
son as the writers of tragedies. 

The old English feeling of tender beauty has 
at last begun to revive. Lamb’s John Woodvil, 
I despised by the critics, and for a while neg 



28 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


\ected by the people, awakened those gentle 
pulses of deep joy which had long forgotten to 
beat. Here first, after a long interval, instead 
of the pompous swelling of inane declamation, 
the music of humanity was heard in its sweet¬ 
est tones. The air of freshness breathed over 
its forest scenes, the delicate grace of its images, 
its nice disclosure of consolations and venera¬ 
blenesses in the nature of man, and the exqui¬ 
site beauty of its catastrophe, where the stony 
remorse of the hero is melted into child-like 
tears, as he kneels on the little hassock where 
he had often kneeled in infancy, are truly 
Shakspearean. Yet this piece, with all its 
delicacies in the reading, wants that striking 
scenic effect, without which a tragedy cannot 
succeed on the stage. The Remorse of Cole¬ 
ridge is a noble poem; but its metaphysical 
clouds, though fringed with golden imagina¬ 
tions, brood too heavily over it. In the detached 


scenes of Barry Cornwall, passages of the 
daintiest beauty abound—the passion is every 
where breathed tenderly forth, in strains which 
are “ silver sweet”—and the sorrow is relieved 
by tenderness the most endearing. Here may 
be enjoyed “a perpetual feast of nectared 
sweets, where no crude surfeit reigns.”—In 
these—and in th^ works of Shiel, and even of 
Maturin—are the elements whence a tragedy 
more noble and complete might be moulded, 
than any which has astonished the world since 
Macbeth and Lear. We long to see a stately sub¬ 
ject for tragedy chosen by some living aspirant— 
the sublime struggle of high passionsfor the mas¬ 
tery displayed—the sufferings relieved by glori¬ 
ous imaginations, yet brought home to our souls, 
and the whole conveying one grand and harmo¬ 
nious impression to the general heart. Let us 
hope that this triumph will not long be wanting, 
to complete the intellectual glories of our age. 


REVIEW OE CIBBER’S APOLOGY FOR HIS LIFE. 


[Retrospective Review, No. 2.] 


There are, perhaps, few individuals, of in¬ 
tense personal conciseness, whose lives, writ¬ 
ten by themselves, would be destitute of interest 
or of value. Works of this description enlarge 
the number of our intimacies without inconve¬ 
nience ; awaken, with a peculiar vividness, 
pleasant recollections of our own past career; 
and excite that sympathy with the little sor¬ 
rows, cares, hopes, and enjoyments of others, 
which infuses new tenderness into all the 
pulses of individual joy. The qualification 
which is most indispensable to the writer of 
such auto-biographies, is vanity. If he does 
not dwell with gusto on his own theme, he will 
communicate no gratification to his reader. He 
must not, indeed, fancy himself too outrage¬ 
ously what he is not, but should have the 
highest sense of what he is, the happiest relish 
for his own peculiarities, and the most confi¬ 
dent assurance that they are matters of great 
interest to the world. He who feels thus, will 
not chill us by cold generalities, but trace with 
an exquisite minuteness all the felicities of his 
life, all the well remembered moments of grati¬ 
fied vanity, from the first beatings of hope and 
first taste of delight, to the time when age is 
gladdened by the reflected tints of young enter¬ 
prise and victory. Thus it was with Colley 
Cibber; and, therefore, his Apology for his own 
life is one of the most amusing books that 
have ever been written. He was not, indeed, 
a very wise or lofty character—nor did he affect 
great virtue or wisdom—but openly derided 
gravity, bade defiance to the serious pursuits 
of life, and honestly preferred his own lightness 
of heart and of head, to knowledge the most 
extensive or thought the most profound. He 
was vain even of his vanity. At the very 
commencement of his work, he avows his 


determination not to repress it, because it is 
part of himself, and therefore will only increase 
the resemblance of the picture. Rousseau did 
not more clearly lay open to the world the 
depths and inmost recesses of his soul, than 
Cibber his little foibles and minikin weak¬ 
nesses. The philosopher dwelt not more in¬ 
tensely on the lone enthusiasm of his spirit, 
on the alleviations of his throbbing soul, on 
the long draughts of rapture which he eagerly 
drank in from the loveliness of the universe, 
than the player on his early aspirings for scenic 
applause, and all the petty triumphs and mor¬ 
tifications of his passion for the favour of the 
town. How real and speaking is the descrip¬ 
tion which he gives of his fond desires for the 
bright course of an actor—of his light-hearted 
pleasure, when, in the little part of the Chap¬ 
lain, in The Orphan , he received his first ap¬ 
plause—and of his highest transport, when, 
the next day, Goodman, a retired actor of note, 
clapping him on the shoulder at a rehearsal, 
exclaimed, with an oath, that he must make a 
good actor, which almost took away his breath, 
and fairly drew tears into his eyes ! The spirit 
of gladness, which gave such exquisite keen¬ 
ness to his youthful appetite for praise, sus¬ 
tained him through all the changes of his for¬ 
tune, enabling him to make a jest of penury, 
assisting him to gather fresh courage from 
every slight, adding zest to every success, until 
he arrived at the high dignity of “ Patentee of 
the Theatre Royal.” When “ he no revenue 
had but his good spirits to feed and clothe 
him,” these were ample. His vanity was to 
him a kingdom. The airiest of town butter¬ 
flies, he sipped of the sweets of pleasure wher¬ 
ever its stray gifts were found; sometimes in 
the tavern among the wits, but chiefly in the 






COLLEY CIBBER’S APOLOGY FOR HIS LIFE. 


29 


golden sphere of the theatre,—that magic circle 
whose majesties do not perish with the chances 
of the world. In reading his life, we become 
possessed of his own feathery lightness, and 
seem to follow the course of the gayest and 
the emptiest of all the bubbles, that, in his age 
of happy trifling, floated along the shallow but 
glittering stream of existence. 

The Life of Cibber is peculiarly a favourite 
with us, not only by reason of the superlative 
coxcombry which it exhibits, but of the due 
veneration which it yields to an art too fre¬ 
quently under-rated, even among those to whose 
gratification it ministers. If the degree of en¬ 
joyment and of benefit produced by an art be 
any test of its excellence, there are few, indeed, 
which will yield to that of the actor. His ex¬ 
ertions do not, indeed, often excite emotions so 
deep or so pure as those which the noblest 
poetry inspires, but their genial influences are 
far more widely extended. The beauties of 
the most gifted of bards, find in the bosoms of 
a very small number an answering sympathy. 
Even of those who talk familiarly of Spenser 
and Milton, there are few who have fairly read, 
and still fewer who truly feel, their divinest 
effusions. It is only in the theatre, that any 
image of the real grandeur of humanity—any 
picture of generous heroism and noble self- 
sacrifice—is poured on the imaginations, and 
sent warm to the hearts of the vast body of 
the people. There, are eyes, familiar through 
months and years only with mechanic toil, 
suffused with natural tears. There, are the 
deep fountains of hearts, long encrusted by 
narrow cares, burst open, and a holy light is 
sent in on the long sunken forms of the imagi¬ 
nation, which shone fair and goodly in boy¬ 
hood by their own light, but have since been 
sealed and forgotten in their “ sunless treasu¬ 
ries.” There, do the lowest and most ignorant 
catch their only glimpse of that poetic radiance 
which sheds its glory around our being. While 
they gaze, they forget the petty concerns of 
their own individual lot, and recognise and 
rejoice in their kindred with a nature capable 
of high emprise, of meek suffering, and of de¬ 
fiance to the powers of agony and the grave. 
They are elevated and softened into men. 
They are carried beyond the ignorant present 
time; feel the past and the future on the instant, 
and kindle as they gaze on the massive reali¬ 
ties of human virtue, or on those fairy visions 
which are the gleaming foreshadows of golden 
years, which hereafter shall bless the world. 
Their horizon is suddenly extended from the 
narrow circle of low anxieties and selfish joys, 
to the farthest boundaries of our moral horizon ; 
and they perceive, in clear vision, the rocks of 
defence for their nature, which their fellow 
men have been privileged to raise. While 
they feel that “ which gives an awe of things 
above them,” their souls are expanded in the 
heartiest sympathy with the vast body of their 
fellows. A thousand hearts are swayed at 
once by the same emotion, as the high grass of 
the meadow yields, as a single blade, to the 
breeze which sweeps over it. Distinctions of 
fortune, rank, talent, age, all give way to the 
warm tide of emotion, and every class feel 
only as partakers in one primal sympathy, 


“ made of one blood,” and equal in the sancti¬ 
ties of their being. Surely the art that produces 
an effect like this—which separates, as by a 
divine alchemy, the artificial from the real in 
humanity—which supplies to the artisan in 
the capital, the place of those woods and free 
airs, and mountain streams, which insensibly 
harmonize the peasant’s character—which 
gives the poorest to feel the old grandeur of 
tragedy, sweeping by with sceptred pall—which 
makes the heart of the child leap with strange 
joy, and enables the old man to fancy himself 
again a child—is worthy of no mean place 
among the arts which refine our manners, by 
exalting our conceptions! 

It has sometimes been objected to the thea¬ 
trical artist, that he merely repeats the lan¬ 
guage and imbodies the conceptions of the 
poet. But the allegation, though specious, is 
unfounded. It has been completely established, 
by a great and genial critic of our own time, 
that the deeper beauties of poetry cannot be 
shaped forth by the actor,* and it is equally 
true, that the poet has little share in the high¬ 
est triumphs of the performer. It may, at first, 
appear a paradox, .but is, nevertheless, proved 
by experience, that the fanciful cast of the lan¬ 
guage has very little to do with the effect of 
an acted tragedy. Mrs. Siddons would not 
have been less than she is, though Shakspeare 
had never written. She displayed genius as 
exalted in the characters drawn by Moore, 
Southern, Otway, and Rowe, as in those of the 
first of human bards. Certain great situations 
are all the performer needs, and the grandest 
emotions of the soul all that he can imbody. 
He can derive little aid from the noblest imagi¬ 
nations or the richest fantasies of the author. 
He may, indeed, by his own genius, like the 
matchless artist to whom we have just alluded,, 
consecrate sorrow, dignify emotion, and kindle 
the imagination as well as awaken the sympa¬ 
thies. But this will be accomplished, not by 
the texture of the words spoken, but by the 
living magic of the eye, of the tone, of the 
action; by all those means which belong ex¬ 
clusively to the actor. When Mrs. Siddons 
cast that unforgotten gaze of blank horror on 
the corpse of Beverley, was she indebted to the 
playwright for the conception 1 When, * as 
Arpasia, in Tamerlane, she gave that look of 
inexpressible anguish, in which the breaking 
of the heart might be seen, and the cold and 
rapid advances of death traced—and fell with¬ 
out a word, as if struck by the sudden blow of 
destiny—in that moment of unearthly power, 
when she astonished and terrified even her 
oldest admirers, and after which, she lay her¬ 
self really senseless from the intensity of her 
own emotion—where was the marvellous stage 
direction, the pregnant hint in the frigid decla¬ 
matory text, from which she wrought this 
amazing picture, too perilous to be often re¬ 
peated! Do the words “I’m satisfied,” in 
Cato, convey the slightest image of that high 
struggle—that contest between nature long re- 


* See Mr. Lamb’s Essay on the Tragedies of Shaks¬ 
peare, as adapted to representation on the stage—a piece, 
which combines more of profound thought, with more ci 
deep feeling and exquisite beauty, than any criticism 
with which we are acquainted. 

c 2 





30 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


pressed and stoic pride—which Mr. Kemble in 
an instant imbodied to the senses, and impressed 
on the soul for ever I Or, to descend into the 
present time and the lowlier drama, does the 
perusal of The School of Reform convey any 
vestige of that rough sublimity which breathes 
in the Tyke of Emery 1 Are Mr. Liston’s 
looks out of book, gotten by heart, invented 
for him by writers of farces ? Is there any 
fancy of invention in its happiest mood—any 
tracings of mortal hand in books—like to the 
marvellous creations which Munden multiplies 
at will 1 These are not to be “ constrained by 
mastery” of the pen, and defy not only the 
power of an author to conceive, but to describe 
them. The best actors, indeed, in their hap¬ 
piest efforts, are little more indebted to the 
poet, than he is to the graces of nature which 
he seizes, than the sculptor to living forms, or 
the grandest painters to history. 

Still less weight is there in the objection, that 
part of the qualities of an actor, as his form 
and voice, are the gifts of nature, which imply 
no merit in their possessor. They are no more 
independent of will, than the sensibility and 
imagination of the bard. Our admiration is 
not determined by merit, but by beauty; we 
contemplate angelic purity of soul with as 
tender a love as virtue, which has been reared 
with intense labour among clouds and storms, 
and follow with as delighted a wonder the 
quick glances of intuition as the longest and 
most difficult researches. The actor exhibits 
as high a perception of natural grace, as fine 
an acquaintance with the picturesque in atti¬ 
tude, as the sculptor. If the forms of his 
imagination do not stand for ages in marble, 
they live and breathe before us while they last— 
change, with all the variations of passion—and 
“ discourse most eloquent music.” They some¬ 
times, as in the case of Mr. Kemble’s Roman 
characters, supply the noblest illustrations of 
history. The story of Coriolanus is to us no 
dead letter; the nobleness of Cato is an ab¬ 
stract idea no longer. We seem to behold 
even now the calm approaches of the mighty 
stoic to his end—to look on him, maintaining 
the forms of Roman liberty to the last, as 
though he would grasp its trembling relics in 
his dying hands—and to listen to those solemn 
tones, now the expiring accents of liberty pass¬ 
ing away, and anon the tremulous breathings 
of uncertain hope for the future. The reality 
with which these things have been presented 
to our youthful eyes is a possession for ever— 
quickening our sympathy with the most august 
instances of human virtue, and enriching our 
souls with palpable images of the majesty of 
old.. 

It may be said, that if a great actor carries 
us into times that are past, he rears up no 
monument which will last in those which are 
to come. But there are many circumstances 
to counterbalance and alleviate the shortness 
of his fame. The anxiety for posthumous re¬ 
nown, though there is something noble in it as 
abstracted from mere personal desires, is 
scarce’^ the loftiest of human emotions. The 
Homeric poets, who breathed forth their strains 
to untutored ears, and left no visible traces of 
their genius, could scarcely anticipate the du¬ 


ration of their works. Shakspeare seems to 
have thought little in his. lifetime of those 
honours which through a4i ages will accumu¬ 
late on his memory. The best benefactors of 
their race have left the world nothing but their 
names, and their remembrances in grateful 
souls. The true poet, perhaps, feels most ho- 
lily when he thinks only of sharing in the im¬ 
mortality of nature, and “owes no allegiance 
but the elements.” Some feeling not unallied 
to this, may solace the actor for the short-lived 
remembrance of his exertions. The images 
which he vivifies are not traced in paper, nor 
diffused through the press, nor extant in mar¬ 
ble ; but are engraven on the fleshly tables of 
the heart, and last till “life’s idle business” 
ceases. To thousands of the young has he 
given their “ first mild touch of sympathy and 
thought,” their first sense of communion with 
their kind. As time advances, and the ranks 
of his living admirers grow thin, the old tell 
of his feats with a tenderer rapture, and give 
such vivid hints of his excellence as enable 
their hearers richly to fancy forth some image 
of grandeur or delight, which, in their minds 
at least, is like him. The sweet lustre of his 
memory thus grows more sacred as it ap¬ 
proaches its close, and tenderly vanishes. His 
name lives still—ever pronounced with hap¬ 
piest feelings and in the happiest hours—and- 
excites us to stretch our thoughts backward 
into the gladnesses of another age. The grave- 
maker’s work, according to the clown, in Ham¬ 
let, outlasts all others, even “ till doomsday,” 
and the actor’s fades away before most others, 
because it is the very reverse of his gloomy 
and durable creations. The theatrical picture 
does not endure because it is the warmest, the 
most living of the works of art; it is short as 
human life, because it is as genial. Those are 
' the intensest enjoyments which soonest wither. 
The fairest graces of nature—those touches 
of the ethereal scattered over the universe— 
pass away while they ravish us. Could we 
succeed in giving permanence to the rainbow, 
to the delicate shadow, or to the moonbeam on 
the waters, their light and unearthly charm 
would be lost for ever. The tender hues of 
youth would ill exchange their evanescent 
bloom for an enamel which ages would not 
destroy. And if “ these our actors” must 
“melt into air, thin air,” leaving but soft 
tracings in the hearts of living admirers—if 
their images of beauty must fade into the 
atmosphere of town gayety, until they only lend 
some delicate graces to those airy clouds 
which gleam in its distance, and which are not 
recognised as theirs, they can scarcely com¬ 
plain of the transitoriness which is necessarily 
connected with the living grace which belongs 
to no other order of artists. 

The work before us, however, may afford 
better consolation than we can render to actors; 
for it redeems not the names, but the vivid 
images of some of the greatest artists of a cen¬ 
tury ago, from oblivion. Here they are not 
embalmed, but kept alive—and breathe, in all 
the glory of their meridian powers, before us. 
Here Betterton’s tones seem yet to melt on the 
entranced hearer—Nokes yet convulses the 
full house with laughter on his first appear 




31 


COLLEY CIBBER’S APOLOGY FOR HIS LIFE. 


ance—and Mrs. Monfort sinks with her dainty, 
diving body to the ground, beneath the con¬ 
scious load oi her own attractions. The 
theatrical portraits in this work are drawn 
with the highest gusto, and set forth with the 
richest colouring. The author has not sought, 
like some admirable critics of this age of criti¬ 
cism, to say as many witty or eloquent things 
on each artist as possible, but simply to form 
the most exact likeness, and to give to the 
drapery the most vivid and appropriate hues. 
We seem to listen to the prompter’s bell—to 
see the curtain rise—and behold on the scene 
the goodly shapes of the actors and actresses 
of another age, in their antique costume, and 
with all the stately airs and high graces which 
the town knows no longer. 

Betterton is the chief object of our author’s 
admiration ; but the account of his various ex¬ 
cellencies is too long to extract entire, and 
perhaps, on account of the spirit of boundless 
eulogy in which it is written, has less of that 
nicety of touch which gives so complete an 
individuality to his pictures of other per¬ 
formers. 

The following are perhaps the most interest¬ 
ing parts of the description : 

“You have seen a Hamlet perhaps, who, on 
the first appearance of his father’s spirit, has 
thrown himself into all the straining vocifera¬ 
tion requisite to express rage and fury, and 
the house has thundered with applause ; 
though the misguided actor was all the while 
(as Shakspeare terms it) tearing a passion 
into rags.—I am the more bold to otfer you this 
particular instance, because the late Mr. 
Addison, while I sat by him, to see this scene 
acted, made the same observation, asking me 
with some surprise, if I thought Hamlet should 
be in so v' dent a passion with the Ghost, 
which though it might have astonished, it had 
not provoked him ! for you may observe that 
in this beautiful speech, the passion never 
rises beyond an almost breathless astonish¬ 
ment, or an impatience, limited by filial reve¬ 
rence, to inquire into the suspected wrongs 
that may have raised him from his peaceful 
tomb! and a desire to know what a spirit, so 
seemingly distressed, might wish or enjoin a 
sorrowful son to execute towards his future 
quiet in the grave 1 This was the light into 
which Betterton threw this scene; which he 
opened with a pause of mute amazement! 
then rising slowly, to solemn, trembling voice, 
he made the Ghost equally terrible to the spec¬ 
tator as to himself! and in the descriptive 
part of the natural emotions which the ghastly 
vision gave him, the boldness of his expostu¬ 
lation was still governed by decency, manly, 
but not braving; his voice never rising into 
that seeming outrage, or wild defiance of what 
he naturally revered. But alas! to preserve 
this medium, between mouthing, and meaning 
too little, to keep the attention more pleasingly 
awake, by a tempered spirit, than by mere 
vehemence of voice, is, of all the master-strokes 
of an actor, the most difficult to reach. In 
this none yet have equalled Betterton. 

“A farther excellence in Betterton, was, that 
he could vary his spirit to the different charac¬ 
ters he acted. Those wild impatient starts, 


that fierce and flashing fire, which he threw 
into Hotspur, never came from the unruffled 
temper of his Brutus; (for I have, more than 
once, seen a Brutus as warm as Hotspur;) 
when the Betterton Brutus was provoked, in 
his dispute with Cassius, his spirit flew only 
to his eye; his steady look alone supplied that 
terror, which he disdained an intemperance in 
his voice should rise to. Thus, with a settled 
dignity of contempt, like an unheeding rock, 
he repelled upon himself the foam of Cassius. 
Perhaps the very words of Shakspeare will 
better let you into my meaning: 

Must I give way, and room, to your rash choler? 

Shall I be frighted when a madman stares? 

And a little after; 

There is no terror, Cassius, in your looks! Sec. 

Not but in soijie parts of this scene, where he 
reproaches Cassius, his temper is not under 
his suppression, but opens into that warmth 
which becomes a man of virtue; yet this is 
that hasty spark of anger, which Brutus him¬ 
self endeavours to excuse.” 

The account of Kynaston, who, in his youth, 
before the performance of women on the stage, 
used to appear in female characters, is very 
amusing. He was particularly successful in 
Evadne, in The Maid’s Tragedy, and always re¬ 
tained “ something of a formal gravity in his 
mien, which was attributed to the stately step 
he had been so early confined to” in his fe¬ 
male attire; the ladies of quality, we are told, 
used to pride themselves in taking him with 
them in their coaches to Hyde Park, in his 
theatrical habit, after the play, which then 
used to begin at the early hour of four. There 
was nothing, however, effeminate in his usual 
style of acting. We are told, that 

“He had a piercing eye, and in characters 
of heroic life, a quick imperious vivacity in 
his tone of voice, that painted the tyrant truly 
terrible. There were two plays of Dryden in 
which he shone, with uncommon lustre; in 
Aurenge-Zebe, he played Morat, and in Don 
Sebastian, Muley Moloch ; in both these parts, 
he had a fierce lion-like majesty in his port 
and utterance, that gave the spectator a kind 
of trembling admiration.” 

The following account of this actor’s per¬ 
formance in the now neglected character of 
Henry the Fourth, gives us the most vivid idea 
of the grave yet gentle majesty, and kingly 
pathos, which the part requires : 

“ But above this tyrannical, tumid superiority 
of character, there is a grave and rational ma¬ 
jesty in Shakspeare’s Harry the Fourth, which 
though not so glaring to the vulgar eye, re¬ 
quires thrice the skill and grace to become 
and support. Of this real majesty, Kynaston 
was entirely master; here every sentiment 
came from him, as if it had been his own, as 
if he had himself, that instant, conceived it, as 
if he had lost the player, and were the rial 
king he personated! a perfection so rarely 
found, that very often, in actors of good repute, 
a certain vacancy of look, inanity of voice, or 
superfluous gesture, shall unmask the man to 
the judicious spectator; who from the least of 
those errors plainly sees the whole but a les 
son given him, to be got by heart, from som* 



32 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


great author, whose sense is deeper than the 
repeater’s understanding. This true majesty 
Kynaston had so entire a command of, that 
when he whispered the following plain line to 
Hotspur, 

Send us your prisoners, or you’ll hear of it! 

he conveyed a more terrible menace in it, than 
the loudest intemperance of voice could swell 
to. But let the bold imitator beware, for with¬ 
out the look, and just elocution that waited on 
it, an attempt of the same nature may fall to 
nothing. 

“But the dignity of this character appeared 
in Kynaston still more shining, in the private 
scene between the King, and Prince his son : 
there you saw majesty, in that sort of grief, 
which only majesty could feel! there the pa¬ 
ternal concern, for the errors of the son, made 
the monarch more revered anfl dreaded: his 
reproaches, so just, yet so unmixed with anger, 
(and therefore the more piercing,) opening as 
it were the arms of nature, with a secret wish, 
that filial duty, and penitence awaked, might 
fall into them with grace and honour. In this 
affecting scene, I thought Kynaston showed 
his most masterly strokes of nature; express¬ 
ing all the various motions of the heart, with 
the same force, dignity, and feeling, they are 
written; adding to the whole, that peculiar 
and becoming grace, which the best writer 
cannot inspire into any actor that is not born 
with it.” 

How inimitably is the varied excellence of 
Monfort depicted in the following speaking 
picture: 

“ Monfort, a younger man by twenty years, 
and at this time in his highest reputation, was 
an actor of a very different style: of person he 
was tall, well made, fair, and of an agreeable 
aspect: his voice clear, full, and melodious: 
in tragedy he was the most affecting lover 
within my memory. His addresses had a re¬ 
sistless recommendation from the very tone 
of his voice, which gave his words such a 
softness, that, as Dryden says, 

-Like flakes of feather’d snow, 

They melted as they fell! 

All this he particularly verified in that scene 
of Alexander, where the hero throws himself 
at the feet of Statira for pardon of his past in¬ 
fidelities. There we saw the great, the tender, 
the penitent, the despairing, the transported, 
and the amiable, in the highest perfection. In 
comedy, he gave the truest life to what we call 
the Fine Gentleman; his spirit shone the 
brighter for being polished with decency: in 
scenes of gayety, he never broke into the re¬ 
gard, that was due to the presence of equal or 
superior characters, though inferior actors 
played them; he filled the stage, not by elbow¬ 
ing, and crossing it before others, or discon¬ 
certing their action, but by surpassing them, 
in true and masterly touches of nature. He 
never laughed at his own jest, unless the point 
of his raillery upon another required it. He 
had a particular talent, in giving life to bons 
mots and repartees : the wit of the poet seemed 
always to come from him extempore, and 
sharpened into more wit from his brilliant 
manner of delivering it; he had himself a good 


share of it, or what is equal to it, so lively a 
pleasantness of humour, that when either of 
these fell into his hands upon the stage, he 
wantoned with them, to the highest delight of 
his auditors. The agreeable was so natural 
to him, that even in that dissolute character 
of the Rover he seemed to wash off the guilt 
from vice, and gave it charms and merit. For 
though it may be a reproach to the poet, to 
draw such characters, not only unpunished, 
but rewarded, the actor may still be allowed 
his due praise in his excellent performance. 
And this is a distinction which, when this co¬ 
medy was acted at Whitehall, King William’s 
Queen Mary was pleased to make in favour of 
Monfort, notwithstanding her disapprobation 
of the play. 

“He had, besides all this, a variety in his 
genius which few capital actors have shown, 
or perhaps have thought it any addition to 
their merit to arrive at; he could entirely 
change himself; could at once throw off the 
man of sense, for the brisk, vain, rude, and 
lively coxcomb, the false, flashy pretender to 
wit, and the dupe of his own sufficiency: of 
this he gave a delightful instance in the cha¬ 
racter of Sparkish in Wycherly’s Country Wife. 
In that of Sir Courtly Nice his excellence was 
still greater; there, his whole man, voice, 
mien, and gesture, was no longer Monfort, but 
another person. There, the insipid, soft civi¬ 
lity, the elegant and formal mien, the drawling 
delicacy of voice, the stately flatness of his ad¬ 
dress, and the empty eminence of his attitudes, 
were so nicely observed and guarded by him, 
that had he not been an entire master of nature, 
had he not kept his judgment, as it were, a 
sentinel upon himself, not to admit the least 
likeness of what he used to be, to enter into 
any part of his performance, he could not 
possibly have so completely finished it.” 

Our author is even more felicitous in his 
description of the performers in low comedy 
and high farce. The following critic brings 
Nokes—the Liston of his age—so vividly be¬ 
fore us, that we seem almost as well acquaint¬ 
ed with him, as with his delicious successor. 

“ Nokes was an actor of quite a different 
genius from any I have ever read, heard of, or 
seen, since or before his time ; and yet his ge¬ 
neral excellence may be comprehended in one 
article, viz., a plain and palpable simplicity of 
nature, which was so utterly his own, that he 
was often as unaccountably diverting in his 
common speech as on the stage. I saw him 
once, giving an account of some table-talk, to 
another actor behind the scenes, which a man 
of quality accidentally listening to, was so de¬ 
ceived by his manner, that he asked him, if 
that was a new play he was rehearsing! It 
seems almost amazing, that this simplicity, so 
easy to Nokes, should never be caught, by any 
one of his successors. Leigh and Underhil have 
been well copied, though not equalled by 
others. But not. all the mimical skill of Est- 
court (famed as he was for it) although he 
had often seen Nokes, could scarce give us an 
idea of him. After this, perhaps, it will be 
saying less of him, when I own, that though I 
have still the sound of every line he spoke, in 
my ear, (which used not to be thought a bad 






33 


COLLEY CIBBER’S APOLOGY FOR HIS LIFE. 


one,) yet I have often tried, by myself, but in 
vain, to reach the least distant likeness of the 
vis cornica of Nokes. Though this may seem 
little to his praise, it may be negatively saying 
a good deal to it, because I have never seen 
any one actor, except himself, whom I could not 
at least so far imitate, as to give you a more 
than tolerable notion of his manner. But 
Nokes was so singular a species, and was so 
formed by nature for the stage, that I ques¬ 
tion if (beyond the trouble of getting words by 
heart) it ever cost him an hour’s labour to 
arrive at that high reputation he had, and de¬ 
served. 

“ The characters he particularly shone in 
were Sir Martin Marr-all, Gomez, in the Spanish 
Friar, Sir Nicolas Cully, in Love in a Tub, 
Barnaby Brittle, in the Wanton Wife, Sir 
Lavy Dunce, in the Soldier’s Fortune, Sosia, 
in Amphytrion, &c. &c. &c. To tell you how 
he acted them, is beyond the reach of criticism: 
but, to tell you what effect his action had upon 
the spectator, is not impossible: this, then, is 
all you will expect from me, and from hence I 
must leave you to guess at him. 

“ He scarce ever made his first entrance in 
a play, but he was received with an involun¬ 
tary applause, not of hands only, for those may 
be, and have often been partially prostituted, 
and bespoken; but by a general laughter, 
which the very sight of him provoked, and na¬ 
ture could not resist; yet the louder the laugh, 
the graver was his look upon it; and sure, the 
ridiculous solemnity of his features were 
enough to have set a whole bench of bishops 
into a titter, could he have been honoured (may 
it be no offence to suppose it) with such grave 
and right reverend auditors. In the ludicrous 
distresses, which, by the laws of comedy, Folly 
is often involved in ; he sunk into suchi a mix¬ 
ture of piteous pusillanimity, and a consterna¬ 
tion so ruefully ridiculous and inconsolable, 
that when he had shook you, to a fatigue of 
laughter, it became a moot point, whether you 
ought not to have pitied him. When he de¬ 
bated any matter by himself, he would shut up 
his mouth with a dumb studious pout, and roll 
his full eye into such a vacant amazement, 
such a palpable ignorance of what to think of 
it, that his silent perplexity (which would 
sometimes hold him several minutes) gave 
your imagination as full content as the most 
absurd thing he could say upon it. In the cha¬ 
racter of Sir Martin Marr-all, who is always 
committing blunders to the prejudice of his 
own interest, when he had brought himself to 
a dilemma in his affairs, by vainly proceeding 
upon his own head, and was afterwards afraid 
to look his governing servant and counsellor 
in the face; what a copious and distressful ha¬ 
rangue have I seen him make with his looks 
(while the house has been in one continued 
roar, for several minutes) before he could pre¬ 
vail with his courage to speak a word to him! 
Then might you have, at once, read in his face 
vexation, that his own measures, which he had 
piqued himself upon, had failed;— envy, of his 
servant’s superior wit;— distress, to retrieve the 
occasion he had lost;— shame, to confess his 
folly;—and yet a sullen desire, to be reconciled 
and better advised for the future ! What tra¬ 


gedy ever showed us such a tumult of passions, 
rising at once in one bosom 1 or what buskined 
hero, standing under the load of them, could 
have more effectually moved his spectators, by 
the most pathetic speech, than poor miserable 
Nokes did, by this silent eloquence, and pite¬ 
ous plight of his features ! 

“His person was of the middle size, his 
voice clear and audible; his natural counte¬ 
nance, grave and sober; but the moment he 
spoke, the settled seriousness of his features 
was utterly discharged, and a dry, drolling, 
or laughing levity took such full possession 
of him, that I can only refer the idea of him to 
your imagination. In some of his low charac¬ 
ters, that became it, he had a shuffling sham¬ 
ble in his gait, with so contented an ignorance 
in his aspect, and an awkward absurdity in his 
gesture, that had you not known him, you 
could not have believed, that naturally he could 
have had a grain of common sense. In a 
word, I am tempted to sum up the character 
of Nokes, as a comedian, in a parody of 
what Shakspeare’s Mark Antony says of Brutus 
as a hero: 

“His life was laughter, and the ludicrous 
So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up, 

And say to all the world—This was an actor.’ ” 

The portrait of Underhil has not less the air 
of exact resemblance, though the subject is of 
less richness. 

“Underhil was a correct and natural come¬ 
dian ; his particular excellence was in charac¬ 
ters, that may be called still-life, I mean the 
stiff, the heavy, and the stupid: to these he 
gave the exactest and most expressive colours, 
and, in some of them, looked as if it were not 
in the power of human passions to alter a fea¬ 
ture of him. In the solemn formality of Oba- 
diah in the Committee, and in the boobily 
heaviness of Lolpoop, in the Squire of Alsatia, 
he seemed the immovable log he stood for! a 
countenance of wood could not be more fixed 
than his, when the blockhead of a charac¬ 
ter required it; his face was full and long; 
from his crown to the end of his nose was the 
shorter half of it, so that the disproportion 
of his lower features, when soberly com¬ 
posed, with an unwandering eye hanging 
over them, threw him into the most lump¬ 
ish, moping mortal, that ever made be¬ 
holders merry! not but, at other times, he 
could be awakened into spirit equally ridicu¬ 
lous. In the coarse, rustic humour of Justice 
Clodpate, in Epsome Wells, he was a delight¬ 
ful brute ! and in the blunt vivacity of Sir 
Sampson, in Love for Love, he showed all that 
true perverse spirit, that is commonly seen in 
much wit and ill-nature. This character is 
one of those few so well written, with so much 
wit and humour, that an actor must be the 
grossest dunce that does not appear with an 
unusual life in it: but it will still show as great 
a proportion of skill, to come near Underhil in 
the acting it, which (not to undervalue those 
who came soon after him) I have not yet seen. 
He was particularly admired too, for the Grave¬ 
digger, in Hamlet. The author of the Tatler 
recommends him to the favour of the town, 
upon that play’s being acted for his benefit 




34 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


wherein, after his age had some years obliged 
him to leave the stage, he came on again, for 
that day, to perform his old part; but, alas! 
so worn and disabled, as if himself was to 
have lain in the grave he was digging: when 
he could no more excite laughter, his infirmities 
were dismissed with pity: he died soon after 
a superannuated pensioner, in the list of those 
who were supported by the joint sharers, 
under the first patent granted to Sir Richard 
Steele.” 

We pass reluctantly over the account of 
Mrs. Barry, Mrs. Betterton, and others of less 
note, to insert the following exquisite picture 
of one who seems to have been the most ex¬ 
quisite of actresses: 

“ Mrs. Monfort, whose second marriage gave 
her the name of Verbruggen, was mistress of 
more variety of humour than I ever knew in any 
one actress. This variety, too, was attended with 
an equal vivacity, which made her excellent in 
characters extremely different. As she was na¬ 
turally a pleasant mimic, she had the skill to 
make that talent useful on the stage, a talent 
which may be surprising in a conversation, and 
yet be lost when brought to the theatre, which 
was the case of Estcourt already mentioned : 
but where the elocution is round, distinct, vo¬ 
luble, and various, as Mrs. Monfort’s was, the 
mimic, there, is a great assistant to the actor. 
Nothing, though ever so barren, if within the 
bounds of nature, could be flat in her hands. 
She gave many heightening touches to charac¬ 
ters but coldly written, and often made an au¬ 
thor vain of his work, that in itself had but 
little merit. She was so fond of humour, in 
what low part soever to be found, that she 
would make no scruple of defacing her fair 
form, to come heartily into it; for when she 
w r as eminent in several desirable characters 
of wit and humour, in higher life, she would 
be in as much fancy, when descendinginto the 
antiquated Abigail, or Fletcher, as when tri¬ 
umphing in all the airs and vain graces of a 
fine lady; a merit, that few actresses care for. 
In a play of D’Urfey’s, now forgotten, called 
The Western Lass, which part she acted, she 
transformed her whole being, body, shape, 
voice, language, look, and features, into almost 
another animal; with a strong Devonshire 
dialect, a broad laughing voice, a poking head, 
round shoulders, an unconceiving eye, and the 
most bedizening, dowdy dress, that ever co¬ 
vered the untrained limbs of a Joan Trot. To 
have seen her here, you would have thought it 
impossible the same creature could ever have 
been recovered, to what was as easy to her, the 
gay, the lively, and the desirable. Nor was 
her humour limited to her sex; for, while 
her shape permitted, she was a more adroit 
pretty fellow than is usually seen upon the 
stage : her easy air, action, mien, and ges¬ 
ture, quite changed from the quoif to the 
cocked hat, and cavalier in fashion. Peo¬ 
ple were so fond of seeing her a man, that 
when the part of Bays, in the Rehearsal, had, 
for some time, lain dormant, she was desired 
to take it up, which I have seen her act with 
all the true, coxcombly spirit and humour that 
the sufficiency of the character required. 

“But what found most employment for her 


whole various excellence at once, was the part 
of Melantha, in Marriage-Alamode. Melan- 
tha is as finished an impertinent as ever 
fluttered in a drawing-room, and seems to con¬ 
tain the most complete system of female fop¬ 
pery that could possibly be crowded into the 
tortured form of a fine lady. Her language, 
dress, motion, manners, soul, and.body, are in 
a continual hurry, to be something more than 
is necessary or commendable. And though I 
doubt it will be a vain labour, to offer you a 
just likeness of Mrs. Monfort’s action, yet the 
fantastic impression is still so strong in my 
memory, that I cannot help saying something, 
though' fantastically, about it. The first ridi¬ 
culous airs that break from her, are upon a 
gallant, never seen before, who delivers her a 
letter from her father, recommending him to 
her good graces, as an honourable lover. Here, 
now, one would think she might naturally show 
a little of the sex’s decent reserve, though 
never so slightly covered! No, sir: not a 
title of it; modesty is the virtue of a poor- 
souled country gentlewoman; she is too much 
a court lady, to be under so vulgar a confu¬ 
sion ; she reads the letter, therefore, with a 
careless, dropping lip, and an erected brow, 
humming it hastily over, as if she were impa¬ 
tient to outgo her father’s commands, by 
making a complete conquest of him at once; 
and that the letter might not embarrass her 
attack, crack! she crumbles it at once, into 
her palm, and pours upon him her whole ar¬ 
tillery of airs, eyes, and motion; down goes 
her dainty, diving body, to the ground, as if 
she were sinking under the conscious load 
of her own attractions; then launches into a 
flood of fine language and compliment, still 
playing her chest forward in fifty falls and 
risings, like a swan upon waving water; and, 
to complete her impertinence, she is so rapidly 
fond of her own wit, that she will not give her 
lover leave to praise it; silent assenting bows, 
and vain endeavours to speak, are all the 
share of the conversation he is admitted to, 
which, at last, he is relieved from, by her en¬ 
gagement to half a score visits, which she 
swims from him to make, with a promise to 
return in a twinkling.” 

In this work, also, the reader may become 
acquainted, on familiar terms, with Wilkes 
and Dogget, and Booth—fall in love with Mrs. 
Bracegirdle, as half the town did in days of 
yore—and sit amidst applauding whigs and 
tories on the first representation of Cato. He 
may follow the actors from the gorgeous scene 
of their exploits to their private enjoyments, 
share in their jealousies, laugh with them at 
their own ludicrous distresses, and join in 
their happy social hours. Yet with all our 
admiration for the theatrical artists, who yet 
live in Cibber’s jipology, we rejoice to believe 
that their high and joyous art is not declining. 
Kemble, indeed, and Mrs. Siddons, have for¬ 
saken that stateliest region of tragedy which 
they first opened to our gaze. But the latter 
could not be regarded as belonging to any age ; 
her path was lonely as it was exalted, and she 
appeared, not as highest of a class which exist¬ 
ed before her, but as a being of another order, 
destined “ to leave the world no copy,” but to 




JOHN DENNIS’S WORKS. 


35 


enrich its imaginations for ever. Yet have 
we, in the youngest of the Kemble line, at 
once an artist of antique grace in comedy, and 
a tragedian of look the most chivalrous and 
heroic—of “ form and moving most express 
and admirable”—of enthusiasm to give vivid 
expression to the highest and the most ho¬ 
nourable of human emotions.-Still, in Ma- 

cready, can we boast of one, whose rich and 
noble voice is adapted to all the most exquisite 
varieties of tenderness and passion—one, 
whose genius leads him to imbody characters 
the most imaginative and romantic—and who 
throws over his grandest pictures tints so mel¬ 
low and so nicely blended, that, with all their 
inimitable variety, they sink in perfect harmony 
into the soul.-Still, in Kean, have we a per¬ 

former of intensity never equalled—of pathos 


the sweetest and most profound—whose 
bursts of passion almost transport us into an¬ 
other order of being, and whose flashes of 
genius cast a new light on the darkest caverns 
of the soul. If we have few names to boast 
in elegant comedy, we enjoy a crowd of the 
richest and most original humourists, with 
Munden—that actor of a myriad unforgotten 
faces—at their head. But our theme has en¬ 
ticed us beyond our proper domain of the 
past; and we must retire. Let us hope for 
some Cibber, to catch the graces of our living 
actors before they perish, that our successors 
may fix on them their retrospective eyes un¬ 
blamed, and enrich with a review of their 
merits some number of our work, which will 
appear, in due course, in the twenty-second 
century! 


REVIEW OF JOHN DENNIS’S WORKS. 


[Retrospective 

Jofin Dennis, the terror or the scorn of 
that age, which is sometimes honoured with the 
title of Augustan, has attained a lasting noto¬ 
riety, to which the reviewers of our times can 
scarcely aspire. His name is immortalized 
in the Dunciad; his best essay is preserved in 
Johnson’s Lives of the Poets ; and his works 
yet keep their state in two substantial vo¬ 
lumes, which are now before us. But the in¬ 
terest of the most poignant abuse and the 
severest criticism quickly perishes. We con¬ 
template the sarcasms and the invectives 
which once stung into rage the irritable ge¬ 
neration of poets, with as cold a curiosity as 
we look on the rusty javelins or stuffed reptiles 
in the glass cases of the curious. The works 
of Dennis will, however, assist us in forming 
a judgment of the criticism of his age, as 
compared with that of our own, and will afford 
us an opportunity of investigating the in¬ 
fluences of that popular art on literature and 
on manners. 

But we must not forget, that Mr. Dennis laid 
claims to public esteem, not only as a critic, 
but as a wit, a politician, and a poet. In the 
first and the last of these characters, he can 
receive but little praise. His attempts at 
gayety and humour are weighty and awkward, 
almost without example. His poetry can only 
be described by negatives; it is not inharmo¬ 
nious, nor irregular, nor often turgid—for the 
author, too nice to sink into the mean, and 
too timid to rise into the bombastic, dwells in 
elaborate “ decencies for ever.” The climax 
of his admiration for Queen Mary—“Mankind 
extols the king—the king admires the queen” 
—will give a fair specimen of his architectural 
eulogies. He is entitled to more respect as an 
honest patriot. He was, indeed, a true-hearted 
Englishman—with the legititmate prejudices 
of his country—warmly attached to the prin- 


Review, No. 2.] 

ciples of the revolution, detesting the French, 
abominating the Italian opera, and deprecat¬ 
ing as heartily the triumph of the Pretender, 
as the success of a rival’s tragedy. His po¬ 
litical treatises, though not very .elegantly 
finished, are made of sturdy materials. He 
appears, from some passages in his letters, to 
have cherished a genuine love of nature, and 
to have turned, with eager delight, to deep and 
quiet solitudes, for refreshment from the fe¬ 
verish excitements, the vexatious defeats, and 
the barren triumphs of his critical career. He 
admired Shakspeare, after the fashion of his 
age, as a wild, irregular genius, who would 
have been inconceivably greater, had he known 
and copied the ancients. The following is a 
part of his general criticism on this subject, 
and a fair specimen of his best style: 

“ Shakspeare was one of the greatest ge¬ 
niuses that the world ever saw, for the tragic 
stage. Though he lay under greater disad¬ 
vantages than any of his successors, yet had 
he greater and more genuine beauties than the 
best and greatest of them. And what makes 
the brightest glory of his character, those 
beauties were entirely his own, and owing to 
the force of his own nature; whereas, his 
faults were owing to his education, and to the 
age he lived in. One may say of him, as they 
did of Homer, that he had none to imitate, and 
is himself inimitable. His imaginations were 
often as just as they were bold and strong. 
He had a natural discretion which never could 
have been taught him, and his judgment was 
strong and penetrating. He seems to have 
wanted nothing but time and leisure for 
thought, to have found out those rules of which 
he appears so ignorant. His characters are 
always drawn justly, exactly, graphically, ex¬ 
cept where he failed by not knowing history 
or the poetical art. He had, for the most part, 
















3G 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


more fairly distinguished them than any of his 
successors have done, who have falsified 
them, or confounded them, by making love 
the predominant quality in all. He had so fine 
a talent for touching the passions, and they are 
so lively in him, and so truly in nature, that 
they often touch us more, without their due 
preparations, than those of other tragic poets, 
who have all the beauty of design and all the 
advantage of incidents. His master passion 
was terror, which he has often moved so power¬ 
fully and so wonderfully, that we may justly 
conclude, that if he had had the advantage of 
art and learning, he would have surpassed the 
very best and strongest of the ancients. His 
paintings are often so beautiful and so lively, 
so graceful and so powerful, especially where 
he uses them in order to move terror, that 
there is nothing, perhaps, more accomplished 
in our English poetry. His sentiments for the 
most part, in his best tragedies, are noble, ge¬ 
nerous, easy, and natural, and adapted to the 
persons who use them. His expression is, in 
many places, good and pure, after a hundred 
years ; simple though elevated, graceful though 
bold, easy though strong. He seems to have 
been the very original of our English tragical 
harmony ; that is, the harmony of blank verse, 
diversified often by dissyllable and trissyllable 
terminations. For that diversity distinguishes 
it from heroic harmony, and, bringing it nearer 
to common use, makes it more proper to gain 
attention, and more fit for action and dialogue. 
Such verse we make when we are 'writing 
prose ; we make such verse in common con¬ 
versation. 

“ If Shakspeare had these great qualities by 
nature, what would he not have been, if he 
had joined to so happy a genius learning and 
the poetical art. For want of the latter, our 
author has sometimes made gross mistakes in 
the characters which he has drawn from his¬ 
tory, against the equality and conveniency of 
manners of his dramatical persons. Witness 
Menenius in the following tragedy, whom he 
has made an arrant buffoon, which is a great 
absurdity. For he might as w^ell have ima¬ 
gined a grave majestic Jack Pudding as a 
buffoon in a Roman senator. Aufidius, the 
general of the Yolscians, is shown a base and 
a profligate villain. He has offended against 
the equality of the manners even in the hero 
himself. For Coriolanus, who in the first part 
of the tragedy is shown so open, so frank, so 
violent, and so magnanimous, is represented 
in the lattei part by Aufidius, which is contra¬ 
dicted by no one, a flattering,fawning, cringing, 
insinuating traitor.” 

Mr. Dennis proceeds very generously to 
apologize for Shakspeare’s faults, by observing 
that he had neither friends to consult, nor time 
to make corrections. He, also, attributes his 
lines “ utterly void of celestial fire,” and pas¬ 
sages “ harsh and unmusical,” to the want of 
leisure to wait for felicitous hours and mo¬ 
ments of choicest inspiration. To remedy 
these defects—to mend the harmony and to 
put life into the dulness of Shakspeare—Mr. 
Dennis has assayed, and brought his own ge¬ 
nius to the alteration of Coriolanus for the 
stage, under the lofty title of the “ Invader of 


his Country, or the Fatal Resentment.” In 
the catastrophe, Coriolanus kills Aufidius, and 
is himself afterwards slain, to satisfy the re¬ 
quisitions of poetical justice; which, to Mr. 
Dennis’s great distress, Shakspeare so often 
violates. It is quite amusing to observe, with 
how perverted an ingenuity all the gaps in 
Shakspeare’s verses are filled up, the irregu¬ 
larities smoothed away, and the colloquial ex¬ 
pressions changed for stately phrases. Thus, 
for example, the noble wish of Coriolanus on 
entering the forum— 

“ The honoured gods 

Keep Rome in safety, and the chairs of justice 
Supplied with worthy men! plant love among us! 
Throng our large temples with the shows of peace, 
And not our streets with war”— 

is thus elegantly translated into classical lan¬ 
guage : 

“ The gfeat and tutelary gods of Rome 
Keep Rome in safety, and the chairs ofjustice 
Supplied with worthy men: plant love among you: 
Adorn our temples with the pomp of peace, 

And, from our streets drive horrid war away.” 

The conclusion of the hero’s last speech on 
leaving Rome— 

“Thus I tummy back : there is a world elsewhere.” 

is elevated into the following heroic lines : 

“ For me, thus, thus, I turn my hack upon you, 

And make a better world where’er I go.” 

His fond expression of constancy to his 
wife— 

“ That kiss 

I carried from thee, dear; and my true lip 
Hath virgined it e’er since,”— 

is thus refined: 

“That kiss 

I carried from my bve, and my true lip 
Hath ever since preserved it like a virgin.” 

The icicle which was wont to “hang on 
Dian’s temple,” here more gracefully “hangs 
upon the temple of Diana.” The burst of min¬ 
gled pride, and triumph of Coriolanus, when 
taunted with the word “ boy,” is here exalted 
to tragic dignity. Our readers have, doubtless, 
ignorantly admired the original. 

Boy! Faise hound! 

If you have writ your annals true, ’tis there, 

That like an eagle in a dove cote, I 
“Fluttered your Volsces in Corioli. 

Alone I did it—Boy. 

The following is the improved version : 

“This boy, that like an eagle in a dove court, 

Flutter’d a thousand Volsces in Corioli, 

And did it without second or acquittance, 

Thus sends their mighty chief to mourn in hell!” 

Who does not now appreciate the sad lot 
of-Shakspeare—so feelingly bew r ailed by Mr. 
Dennis—that he had not a critic, of the age of 
King William, by his side, to refine his style 
and elevate his conceptions ! 

It is edifying to observe, how the canons of 
Mr. Dennis’s criticism, which he regarded as' 
the imperishable laws of genius, are now 
either exploded, or considered as matters of 
subordinate importance, wholly unaffecting 
the inward soul of poetry. No one now re¬ 
gards the merits of an Epic poem, as decided 
by the subservience of the fable and the ac¬ 
tion to the moral—by the presence or the ab- 





JOHN DENNIS’S WORKS. 


37 


sence of an allegory—by the fortunate or un¬ 
fortunate fate of the hero—or by any other 
rules of artificial decorum, which the critics 
of former times thought fit to inculcate. We 
learn from their essays, whether the works 
which they examine are constructed, in exter¬ 
nals, according to certain fantastic rules ; but, 
whether they are frigid or impassioned, har¬ 
monious or prosaic, filled with glorious imagi¬ 
nations, or replete with low common-places: 
whether, in short, they are works of genius or 
of mere toil—are questions entirely beneath 
their concern. The critic on the tragedy of 
Cato, ingenious and just as it is,omits one ma¬ 
terial objection to that celebrated piece—that 
it is good for nothing, and would be so if all 
the faults selected for censure could be, in an 
instant, corrected. There is a French essay 
on Telemachus, framed on the same superfi¬ 
cial principles of criticism, which, after a 
minute examination of the moral, fable, cha¬ 
racters, allegory, and other like requisites of 
excellence, triumphantly proves its claim to 
be ranked with, if not above, the great poems 
of Homer and of Virgil. Mr. Dennis seems, 
in general, to have applied the rules of criti¬ 
cism, extant in his day, to the compositions on 
which he passed judgment; but there was 
one position respecting which his contempo¬ 
raries were not agreed, and on which he com¬ 
bated with the spirit of a martyr. This dis¬ 
puted point, the necessity of observing poetical 
justice in works of fiction, we shall briefly ex¬ 
amine, because we think that it involves one 
of those mistakes in humanity, which it is al¬ 
ways desirable to expose. But first we must, 
in fairness, lay one of our author’s many ar¬ 
guments, on this subject, before our readers. 

“The principal character of an epic poem 
must be either morally good or morally vicious ; 
if he is morally good, the making him end un¬ 
fortunately will destroy all poetical justice, 
and, consequently, all instruction: such a 
poem can have no moral, and, consequently, 
no fable, no just and regular poetical action, 
but must be a vain fiction and an empty 
amusement. Oh, but there is a retribution in 
futurity! But I thought that the reader of an 
epic poem was to owe his instruction to the 
poet, and not to himself: well then, the poet 
may tell him so at the latter end of his poem: 
ay, would to God I could see such a latter end 
of an epic poem, where the poet should tell the 
reader, that he has cut an honest man’s throat, 
only that he may have an opportunity to send 
him to heaven : and that, though this w T ould 
be but an indifferent plea upon an indictment 
for murder at the Old Bailey, yet that he hop,ps 
the good-natured reader will have compassion 
on him, as the gods have on his hero. But 
raillery apart, sir, what occasion is there for 
having recourse to an epic poet to tell our¬ 
selves by the bye, and by the occasional reflec¬ 
tion, that there will be a retribution in futurity, 
when the Christian has this in his heart con¬ 
stantly and directly, and the Atheist and Free¬ 
thinker will make no such reflection] Tell me 
truly, sir, would not such a poet appear to you 
or me, not to have sufficiently considered what 
a poetical moral is 1 And should not you or I, 
sir, be obliged, in order to make him compre¬ 


hend the nature of it, to lay before him that 
universal moral, which is the foundation of 
all morals, both epic and dramatic, and is in¬ 
clusive of them all, and that is, That he who 
does good, and perseveres in it, shall always 
be rewarded; and he who does ill, and perse¬ 
veres in it, shall always be punished ! Should 
we not desire him to observe, that the foresaid 
reward must always attend and crown good 
actions, not sometimes only, for then it would 
follow, that sometimes a perseverance in good 
actions has no reward, which would take away 
all poetical instruction, and, indeed, every sort 
of moral instruction, resolving Providence into 
chance or fate. Should we not, sir, farther 
put him in mind, that since whoever perse¬ 
veres in good actions, is sure to be rewarded 
at the last, it follows, that a poet does not as¬ 
sert by his moral, that he is always sure to be 
rewarded in this world, because that would 
be false, as you have very justly observed, p. 
60; and, therefore, never can be the moral of 
an epic poem, because what is false may 
delude, but only truth can instruct. Should 
we not let him know, sir, that this universal 
moral only teaches us, that whoever perseveres 
in good actions, shall be always sure to be re¬ 
warded either here or hereafter; and that the 
truth of this moral is proved by the poet, by 
making the principal character of his poem, 
like all the rest of his characters, and like the 
poetical action, at the bottom, universal and 
allegorical, even after distinguishing it by a 
particular name, by making this principal 
character, at the bottom, a mere political phan¬ 
tom of a very short duration, through the 
whole extent of which duration we can see at 
once, which continues no longer than the read¬ 
ing of the poem, and that being over, the 
phantom is to us nothing, so that unless our 
sense is satisfied of the reward that is given to 
this poetical phantom, whose whole duration 
we see through from the very beginning to the 
end; instead of a wholesome moral, there 
would be a pernicious instruction, viz : That 
a man may persevere in good actions, and not 
be rewarded for it through the whole extent of 
his duration, that is, neither in this world nor 
in the world to come.” 

It may be sufficient to answer to a’l this— 
and to much more of the same kind wluchour 
author has adduced—that little good can be 
attained by representations which are perpetu¬ 
ally at variance with our ordinary perceptions. 
The poet may represent humanity as mighder 
and fairer than it appears to a common 
observer. In the mirror which he “ holds up 
to nature,” the forms of might and of beauty 
may look more august, more lovely, or more 
harmonious, than they appear, in the “ light 
of common day,” to eyes which are ungifted 
with poetic vision. But if the world of imagi¬ 
nation is directly opposed to that of reality, it 
will become a cold abstraction, a baseless 
dream, a splendid mockery. We shall strive 
in vain to make men sympathize with beings 
of a sphere purely ideal, where might shall be 
always right, and virtue its own present as 
well as exceeding great reward. Happily, 
the exhibition is as needless for any moral 
purposes, as it would be inade(Jhate to attain 
D 







38 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


them. Though the poet cannot make us wit¬ 
nesses of the future recompense of that virtue, 
which here struggles and suffers, he can cause 
us to feel, in the midst of its very struggles 
and sufferings, that it is eternal. He makes 
the principle of immortality manifest in the 
meek submission, in the deadly wrestle with 
fate, and even in the mortal agonies of his 
noblest characters. What, in true dignity”, 
does virtue lose by the pangs which its clay 
tenement endures, if we are made conscious 
of its high prerogatives, though we do not 
actually behold the immunities which shall 
ultimately be its portion 1 Hereafter it may 
be rewarded; but now it is triumphant. We 
require no dull epilogue to tell us, that it shall 
be crowned in another and happier state of 
being; for our souls gush with admiration and 
sympathy with it, amidst its sorrows. We 
love it, and burn to imitate it, for its own love¬ 
liness, not for its gains. Surely it is a higher 
aim of the poet to awaken this emotion—to 
inspire us with the awe of goodness, amidst 
its deepest external debasements, and to make 
us almost desire to share in them, than to in¬ 
vite us to partake in her rewards, and to win 
us by a calculating sympathy. The hovel or 
the dungeon does not, in the pictures of a 
genuine poet, give the colouring to the soul 
which inhabits it, but receives from its ma¬ 
jesty a consecration beyond that of temples, 
and a dignity statelier than that of palaces. 
For it is his high prerogative to exhibit the 
spiritual part of man triumphant over that 
about him, which is mortal—to show, in his 
far-reaching hope, his moveless constancy, his 
deep and disinterested affections, that there is 
a spirit within him, which death cannot destroy. 
Low, indeed, is the morality which aspires to 
affect men by nothing beyond the poor and 
childish lesson, that to be virtuous is to be 
happy. Virtue is no dependant on earthly ex¬ 
pediencies for its excellence. It has a beauty 
to be loved, as vice has a deformity to be 
abhorred, which are unaffected by the conse¬ 
quences experienced by their votaries. Do 
we admire the triumph of vice, and scoff 
at goodness, when we think on the divine 
Clarissa, violated, imprisoned, heart-broken, 
dying] Must Parson Adams receive a mitre, 
to assure us that we should love him] Our 
best feelings and highest aspirations are not 
yet of so mercantile a cast as those who con¬ 
tend for “poetical justice’’ would imagine. 
The mere result, in respect of our sympathies, 
is as nothing. The only real violation of 
poetical justice is in the violation of nature in 
the clothing. When, for example, a wretch, 
whose trade is murder, is represented as cher¬ 
ishing the purest and the deepest love for an 
innocent being—when chivalrous delicacy or 
sentiment is conferred on a pirate, tainted with 
a thousand crimes—the effect is immoral, 
whatever doom may, at last, await him. If 
the barriers of virtue and of evil are melted 
down by the current of spurious sympathy, 
there is no catastrophe which can remove the 
mischief; and while these are preserved in our 
feelings, there is none which can truly harm us. 

The critics of the age of Dennis held a mid¬ 
dle course between their predecessors of old 


time, and their living successors. The men 
who first exercised the art of criticism, imbued 
with personal veneration for the loftiest works 
of genius, sought to deduce rules from them, 
which future poets should observe. They did 
not assume the right of passing individual 
judgments on their contemporaries—nor did 
they aim at deciding even abstract questions 
of taste on their own personal authority—but 
attempted, by fixing the laws of composition, 
to mark out the legitimate channels in which 
the streams of thought, passion, and sentiment, 
should be bounded through all ages. Their 
dogmas, therefore, whether they contained 
more or less of truth, carried with them no ex¬ 
trinsic weight, were influenced by no personal 
feelings, excited no personal animosities, but 
simply appealed, like poetry itself, to those 
minds which alone could give them sanction. 
In the first critical days of England—those of 
the Rymers and the Dennises—the professors 
of the art began to regard themselves as 
judges, not merel\ T of the principles of poetry, 
but of their application by living authors. 
Then commenced the arrogance on the side 
of the supervisors, and the impatience and re¬ 
sentment on that of their subjects, which con¬ 
temporary criticism necessarily inspires. The 
worst passions of man are brought into exer¬ 
cise in reference to those pure and ennobling 
themes, which should be sacred from all low 
contentions of “the ignorant present time.” 
But the battle was, at least, fair and open. 
The critic still appealed to principles, however 
fallacious or imperfect, which all the world 
might examine. His decrees had no weight, 
independent of his reasons, nor was his name, 
or his want of one, esteemed of magical virtue. 
He attacked the poets on equal terms—some¬ 
times, indeed, with derision and personal 
slander—but always as a foe to subdue, not 
as a judge to pass sentence on them. Criti¬ 
cism, in our own times, has first assumed the 
air of “ sovereign sway and masterdom” over 
the regions of fantasy. Its professors enforce, 
not established laws, contend no longer for 
principles, attack poets no more with chival¬ 
rous zeal, as violating the cause of poetic 
morals, or sinning against the regularities of 
their art. They pronounce the works, of which 
they take cognisance, to be good or bad—often 
without professing to give any reason for their 
decision—or referring to any standard, more 
fixed or definite than their own taste, partiality, 
or prejudice. And the public, without any 
knowledge of their fitness for their office— 
without even knowing their names—receive 
them as the censors of literature, the privileged 
inspectors of genius! This strange su¬ 
premacy of criticism, in our own age, gives 
interest to the investigation of the claims 
which the art itself possesses to the respect 
and gratitude of the people. If it is, on the 
whole, beneficial to the world, it must either 
be essential to the awakening of genius—or 
necessary to direct its exertions—or useful in 
repressing abortive and mistaken efforts—or 
conducive to the keeping alive and fitly 
guiding admiration to the good and great. On 
each of these grounds, we shall now very 
briefly examine its value. 












JOHN DENNIS'S WORKS. 


39 


1. It is evident, that the art of criticism is | 
not requisite to the development of genius. be¬ 
cause, in the golden ages of poetry it has had 
no portion. Its professors have never even 
constructed the scatfolding to aid the erection 
ot the cloud-capped towers and solemn tem¬ 
ples of the bard. By his facile magic he has 
caded them into existence, like the palace of 
Aladdin, as complete in the minutest graces 
ct finishing as noble in design. Long before 
the art of criticism was known in Greece, her 
rhapsodists had attained the highest excellen¬ 
cies of poetry. No fear of a critic's scorn, no 
desire of a critic’s praise, influenced these 
consecrated wanderers. Nature alone was 
their model, their inspirer, and their guide. 
From her did they drink in the feeling, not only 
of permanence and cf grandeur, bat of aerial 
grace and roseate beauty. The rocks and 
hills gave them the visible images of lasting 
might—rhe golden clouds of even. “ sailing on 
the bosom of the air,” sent a feeling of eva¬ 
nescent loveliness into their souls—and the 
delicate branchings of the grove, reflected in 
the calm waters, imbued them with a percep¬ 
tion of elegance beyond the reach of art. No 
pampered audiences thought themselves enti¬ 
tled to judge them : to ana! vze their powers; 
to descant on their imperfections; to lament 
their failures; or to eulogize their sublimities, 
as those who had authority to praise. Their 
hearers dwelt on their accents with rapturous 
wonder, as nature's living oracles. They 
wandered through the everywhere commu¬ 
nicating joy, and everywhere receiving reve¬ 
rence-exciting in youth its first tearful ecsta¬ 
sy. and kindling fresh enthusiasm amidst the 
withered affections of age. They were revered 
as the inspired chroniclers of heroic deeds— 
the inspirers of national glory and virtue—the 
depositories of the mysteries and the philoso¬ 
phic wisdom of times which even then were 
old. They trusted not to paper or the press 
for the preservation of their fame. They were 
contented, that each tree beneath which they 
had poured form their effusions, should be 
lived for their sake—that the forked promon- 
torv should bear witness of them—and the 
“ brave o'erhanging firmament, fretted with 
golden fire." tell of those who had first awaken¬ 
ed wi nin the soul a sense ot its glories. Their 
works were treasured up nowhere but in the 
sou.—srread abroad only by the enthusiasm 
of kindred reciters—and transmitted to the chil¬ 
dren of other generations, while they listened 
with serious faces to the wondrous tales of 
their fathers. Yet these poems, so produced, 
so received, so preserved, were not only in¬ 
stinct with heavenly fire, but regular as the 
elaborate efforts of the most polished ages. In 
these products of an era of barbarism, have 
future bards not only found an exhaustless 
treasury of golden imaginations, but critics 
have discovered all those principles of order 
which thev would establish as unalterable 
laws. The very instances of error and haste 
in their authors have been converted into 
figures of rhetoric, by those men. who represent 
nature herself as irregular and feeble, and a 
minuie attention to rules as essential to the 
perfection of genius. 


As criticism had no share in producing the 
Homeric poems, so also did it contribute no¬ 
thing to the perfection of the Greek tragedies. 
For those works—the most complete and 
highly finished, if not the most profound, of all 
human creations—there was no more previous 
warrant , than for the wildest dream of fantasy. 
No critic fashioned the moulds in which those 
exquisite groups were cast, or inspired them 
with Promethean life. They were struck off 
in the heat of inspiration—the offspring of 
moments teeming for immortality—though the 
slightest limb of each of the figures is finished 
as though it had been the labour of a life. 
These eternal works were complete—the spirit 
which inspired their authors was extinct— 
when Aristotle began to criticise. The deve¬ 
lopment of the art of poetry, by that great 
philosopher, wholly failed to inspire any bard, 
whose productions might break the descent 
from the mighty relics of the preceding years. 
After him, his disciples amused themselves in 
refining on his laws—in cold disputations and 
profitless scrutinies. The soil, late so fertile 
with the stateliest productions of nature, was 
overgrown with a low and creeping under¬ 
wood, which, if any delicate flower struggled 
into day, oppressed and concealed it from 
view beneath its briary and tangled thickets. 

2. The instances already given refute not 
only the notion that criticism is requisite to 
prepare the way for genius, but also the opi¬ 
nion that it is necessary to give it a right di¬ 
rection and a perfect form. True imagination 
is in itself “ all compact.” The term irregu¬ 
lar. as absolutely applied to genius, is absurd, 
and applied relatively, it means nothing but 
that it is original in its career. There is 
properly no such thing as irregular genius. A 
man endowed with “ the vision and the faculty 
divine.” may choose modes of composition 
unsuited to the most appropriate display of his 
powers;—his images may not be disposed in 
the happiest arrangement, or may be clustered 
around subjects, in themselves, dreary or 
mean, but these fantasies must be in themselves 
harmonious, or they would not be beauteous, 
would not be imaginations. Genius is a law 
unto itself. Its germs have, within them, not 
only the principles of beauty, but the very form 
which the flower in its maturity must expand. 
Asa wavy gleam of fire rises from the spark, 
in its own exquisite shape, so does imagina¬ 
tion send forth its glories, perfect by the felici¬ 
tous necessity of their nature, exquisite in form 
bv the same impulse which gives them bright¬ 
ness and fervour. But how can the critic, in 
reality, acquire any jurisdiction over the ge¬ 
nuine poet ? Where are the lines by which he 
can fathom the depths of the soul; where the 
instrument bv which he can take the altitude 
of u the highest heaven of invention 1” How 
can he judge of thoughts which penetrate the 
mysteries of humanity, of fancies which “ m 
the colours of the rainbow live, and play in the 
plighted clouds,” of anticipations and foretastes 
by which the bard already “ breathes in worlds, 
to which the heaven of heavens is but a veil 1” 
Can he measure a sunbeam, or constrain a 
cloud, or count the steps of the bounding stag 
of the forest, to judge whether they are grace 


40 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


fill 1 Has he power even to define those gigantic 
shadows reflected on the pure mirror of the 
poet’s imagination, from the eternal things 
which mortal eyes cannot discern I At best, 
he can but reason from what has been to what 
should be; -and what can be more absurd than 
this course in reference to poetic invention 1 
A critic can understand no rules of criticism 
except what existing poetry has taught him. 
There was no more reason, after the production 
of the Iliad, to contend that future poems should 
in certain points resemble it, than there was 
before the existence of that poem to lay down 
rules which would prevent its being what it is. 
There was antecedently no more probability 
that the powers of man, harmoniously exerted, 
could produce the tale of Troy divine, than 
that, after it, the same powers would not pro¬ 
duce other works equally marvellous and 
equally perfect, yet wholly different in their 
colouring and form. The reasons which would 
prevent men from doing any thing unlike it, 
would also have prevented its creation, for it 
was doubtless unlike all previous inventions. 
Criticism can never be prospective, until the 
resources of man and nature are exhausted. 
Each new world of imagination revolves on 
itself, in an orbit of its own. Its beauties create 
the taste which shall relish them, and the very 
critics which shall extol their proportions. The 
first admirers of Homer had no conception 
that the Greek tragedies would start into life 
and become lasting as their idol. Those who 
lived after the times when these were perfected, 
asserted that no dramas could be worthy of 
praise, which were not fashioned according to 
their models and composed of similar mate¬ 
rials. But, after a long interval, came Shak- 
speare—at first, indeed, considered by many as 
barbarous and strange—who, when his real 
merits are perceived, is felt to be, at the least, 
equal to his Greek predecessors, though violat¬ 
ing every rule drawn from their works. Even 
in our short remembrance, we can trace the 
complete abolition of popular rules of criticism, 
by the new and unexpected combinations of 
genius. A few years ago, it was a maxim 
gravely asserted by Reviews, Treatises, and 
Magazines, that no interesting fiction could 
effectively be grafted on history. But “mark 
how a plain tale” by the author of Waverley 
“puts down” the canon for ever! In fact, 
unless with more than angel’s ken a critic 
could gaze on all the yet unpossessed regions 
of imagination, it is impossible that he should 
limit his discoveries which yet await the bard. 
He may perceive, indeed, how poets of old have 
by their magic divided the clouds which bound 
man’s ordinary vision, and may scan the re¬ 
gions which they have thus opened to our 
gaze. But how can he thus anticipate what 
future bards may reveal—direct the propor¬ 
tions, the colours and the forms, of the realities 
which they shall unveil—fix boundaries to re¬ 
gions of beauty yet unknown; determine the 
height of their glory-stricken hills; settle the 
course of their mighty waters; or regulate the 
visionary shapes of superhuman grace, which 
shall gleam in the utmost distance of their far 
perspectives 1 

3. But it may be urged, that criticism is I 


useful in putting down the pretensions of those 
who aspire, without just claim, to the honours 
of genius. This, indeed, in so far as it is un¬ 
favourable, is its chief object in modern times. 
The most celebrated of literary tribunals takes 
as the motto of its decrees, “Judex damnatur 
cum nocens absolvitur;” assuming that to 
publish a dull book is a crime, which the pub¬ 
lic good requires should be exposed, whatever 
laceration of the inmost soul may be inflicted 
on the offender in the process. This damna¬ 
tory principle is still farther avowed in the 
following dogma of this august body, which 
deserves to be particularly quoted as an ex 
plicit declaration of the spirit of modern criti¬ 
cism : 

“ There is nothing of which nature has been 
more bountiful than poets. They swarm like 
the spawn of the cod-fish, with a vicious 
fecundity that invites and requires destruction 
To publish verses is become a sort of evidence 
that a man wants sense; which is repelled, 
not by writing good verses, but by writing 
excellent verses ;—by doing what Lord Byron 
has done;—by displaying talents great enough 
to overcome the disgust which proceeds from 
satiety, and showing that all things may be¬ 
come new under the reviving touch of genius.” 
— Ed. Rev., No. 43, p. 6S. 

It appears to us, that the crime and the evil 
denounced in this pregnant sentence are en¬ 
tirely visionary and fantastic. There is no 
great danger, that works without talent should 
usurp the admiration of the world. Splendid 
error maj' mislead; vice linked to a radiant 
angel, by perverted genius, may seduce; and 
the union of high energy with depravity of 
soul may teach us to respect where we ought 
to shudder. But men will not easily be dazzled 
by insipidity, enchanted by discord, or awed 
by weakness. The mean and base, even if 
left to themselves unmolested, will scarcely 
grow immortal by the neglect of the magnani¬ 
mous and the wise. He who cautions the 
public against the admiration of feeble pro¬ 
ductions, almost equals the wisdom of a sage, 
who should passionately implore a youth not 
imprudently to set his heart on ugliness and 
age. And surely our nerves are not grown so 
finely tremulous, that we require guardians 
who may providently shield us from glancing 
on a work which may prove unworthy of 
perusal. It is one high privilege of our earthly 
lot, that the best pleasures of humanity are 
not balanced by any painful sensations arising 
from their contraries. We drink in joy too 
deep for expression, when we penetrate the 
vast solitudes of nature, and gaze on her rocky 
fortresses, her eternal hills, her regions “con¬ 
secrate to eldest time.” But we feel no an¬ 
swering agony while we traverse level and 
barren plains; especially if we can leave 
them at pleasure.—Thus, while we experience 
a thrilling delight, in thinking on the divinest 
imaginations of the poet, we are not plunged, 
by the dullest author, into the depths of sorrow. 
At all events, we can throw down the book at 
once; and we must surely be very fastidious 
if we do not regard the benefit conferred on 
printers and publishers, and the gratification 
of the author’s innocent and genial vanity, as 




JOHN DENNIS’S WORKS. 


41 


amply compensating the slight labour which 
we have taken in vain. 

But, perhaps, it is the good of the aspirants 
themselves, rather than of their readers, which 
the critic professes to design. Here, also, we 
think he is mistaken. The men of our gene¬ 
ration are not too prone to leave their quest 


which may prevent minds, gifted with the 
richest faculties, from exerting them at the 
first with success. The very number of 
images, crowding on the mirror of the soul, 
may for a while darken its surface, and give 
the idea of inextricable confusion. The young 
poet’s holiest thoughts must often appear to 


alter the substantial blessings of the world, in him too sacred to be fully developed to the 
order to pursue those which are aerial and world. His soul will half shrink at first from the 
shadowy. The very error of the mind, which disclosure of its solemn immunities and strange 
takes the love for the power of poetry, is more joys. He will thus become timid and irresolute 
goodly than common wisdom. But there are —tell but a slight part of that which he feels— 
certain seasons, we believe, in life—some few and this broken and disjointed communication 
golden moments at least—in which all men will appear senseless or feeble. The more 
have really perceived, and felt, and enjoyed, deep and original his thoughts—the more daz- 


as poets. Who remembers not an hour of 
serious ecstasy, when, perhaps, as he lay be¬ 
neath some old tree and gazed on the setting 
sun, earth seemed a visionary thing, the glo¬ 
ries of immortality were half revealed, and 
the first notes a universal harmony whispered 
to his soul ?—some moment, when he seemed 
almost to realize the eternal, and could have 
been well contented to yield up his mortal 
being!—some little space, populous of high 
thoughts and disinterested resolves—some j 
touch upon that u line of limitless desires,” 


zling his glimpses into the inmost sanctuaries 
of nature,—the more difficult will be the task 
of imbodying these in words, so as to make 
them palpable to ordinary conceptions. He 
will be constantly in danger, too, in the fer¬ 
vour of his spirit, of mistaking things which 
in his mind are connected with strains of de¬ 
licious musing, for objects, in themselves, 
stately or sacred. The seeming common¬ 
place, which we despise, may be to him 4he 
index to pure thoughts and far-reaching de¬ 
sires. In that which to the careless eye may 


along which he shall live in a purer sphere? seem but a little humble spring—pure, perhaps, 
—And if that taste of joy is not to be renewed and sparkling, but scarce worthy of a glance— 
on earih, the soul will not suffer by an attempt the more attentive observer may perceive a 
to prolong its memory. It is a mistake, to depth which he cannot fathom, and discover 
suppose that young beginners in poetry are that the seeming fount is really the breaking 
always prompted by a mere love of worldly forth of a noble river, winding its consecrated 
fame. The sense of beauty and the love of way beneath the soil, which, as it runs, will 
the ideal, if they do not draw all the faculties soon bare its bosom to the heavens, and glide 
into their likeness, still impart to the soul in a cool.and fertilizing majesty. And is there 
something of their rich and unearthly colour- not some danger that souls, whose powers of 


mg. Young fantasy spreads "its golden films, 
slender though they be, through the varied 
tenour of existence. Imagination, nurtured 
in the opening of life, though it be not de¬ 
veloped in poetic excellence, will strengthen 
the manly virtue, give a noble cast to the 


expression are inadequate to make manifest 
their inward wealth, should be sealed for ever 
by the hasty sentences of criticism ? The name 
of Lord Byron is rather unfortunately intro¬ 
duced by the celebrated journal which we 
have quoted, into its general denunciation 


thoughts, and a generous course to the sympa- against youthful poets. Surely the critics 
thies. It will assist to crush self-love in its must for the moment have forgotten, that at 


first risings, to mellow and soften the heart, 
and prepare it for its glorious destiny. Even 
if these consequences did not follow, surely 
the most exquisite feelings of young hope are 
not worthy of scorn. They may truly be 
worth years of toil, of riches, and of honour. 
Who would crush them at a venture—short 
and uncertain as life is—and cold and dreary 
as are often its most brilliant successes ? 
What, indeed, can this world offer to compare 


the outset of the career of that bard, to whose 
example they now refer, as most illustriously 
opposed to the mediocrity which they condemn, 
they themselves poured contempt on his en 
deavours! Do they now wish that he had 
taken their counsel? Are they willing to run 
the hazard, for the sake of putting down a 
thousand pretenders a few months before their 
time, of crushing another power such as they 
esteem his own ? Their very excuse—that, at 


with the earliest poetic dreams, which our the time, his verses were all which they had ad- 
modern critics think it sport or virtue to j judged them—is the very proof of the impolicy 

, of such censures. If the object of their scorn 
has, in this instance, risen above it, how dc 
we know that more delicate minds have not 
sunk beneath it ? Besides, although Lord 
Byron was not repelled, but rather excited by 
: their judgment, he seems to have sustained 
j from it scarcely less injury. If it stung him 
| into energy, it left its poison in his soul. 


destroy ? 

‘-Such views the youthful bard allure, 

As. mindless of the following gloom, 

He deems their colours shall endure 
’Till peace go with him to the tomb. 

And let him nurse his fond deceit. 

And what if he must die in sorrow:— 

Who would not cherish dreams so sweet, 

Though care and grief should come to-morrow?” 


It 

But, supposing for a moment that it were first instigated his spleen;—taught him that 
really desirable to put down all authors who spirit of scorn which debases the noblest fa 


do not rise into excellence, at any expense of 
personal feeling, we must not forget the risk 
which such a process involves, of crushing 
undeveloped genius. There are many causes 

« 


culties—and impelled him, in his rage, to at 
tack those who had done him no wrong, to 
scoff at the sanctities of humanity, and to pre¬ 
tend to hate or deride his species l 
n 2 



42 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


And, even if genius is too deep to be sup¬ 
pressed, or too celestial to be perverted, is it 
nothing that the soul of its possessor should 
be wrung with agony 1 For a while, criticism 
may throw back poets whom it cannot anni¬ 
hilate, and make them pause in their course 
of glory and of joy, “ confounded though im¬ 
mortal.” Who can estimate those pangs, 
which on the “ purest spirits” are thus made 
to prey 

“ as on entrails, joint, and limb, 

With answerable pains but more intense?” 

The heart of a young poet is one of the most 
sacred things on earth. How nicely strung 
are its fibres—how keen its sensibilities—how 
shrinking the timidity with which it puts forth 
its gentle conceptions ! And shall such a heart 
receive rude usage from a world which it only 
desires to improve and to gladden 1 Shall its 
nerves be stretched on the rack, or its appre¬ 
hensions turned into the instruments of its tor¬ 
ture 1 All this, and more, has been done to¬ 
wards men of whom “this world was not 
worthy.” Cowper, who, first of modern poets, 
restored to the general heart the feeling of 
healthful nature—whose soul was without one 
particle of malice or of guile—whose suscep¬ 
tible and timorous spirit shrunk tremblingly 
from the touch of this rough world—was 
chilled, tortured, and almost maddened, by 
some nameless critic’s scorn. Kirke White— 
the delicate beauties of whose mind were des¬ 
tined scarcely to unfold themselves on earth— 
in the beginning of his short career, was cut 
to the heart by the cold mockery of a stranger. 
A few sentences, penned, perhaps, in mere 
carelessness, almost nipped the young blossoms 
of his genius “ like an untimely frost;” palsied 
for awhile all his faculties—imbittered his little 
span of life—haunted him almost to the verge 
of his grave, and heightened his dying agonies! 
Would the annihilation of all the dulness in 
the world compensate for one moment’s an¬ 
guish inflicted on hearts like these 1 

We have been all this time considering not 
the possible abuses, but the necessary tenden¬ 
cies, of contemporary criticism. All the evils 
we have pointed out may arise, though no 
sinister design pervert the Reviewer’s judg¬ 
ment—though no prejudice, even unconscious¬ 
ly, warp him—and, even, though he may decide 
fairly “from the evidence before him.” But it 
is impossible that this favourable supposition 
should be often realized in an age like ours. 
Temper, politics, religion, the interests of rival 
poets, or rival publishers—a thousand influ¬ 
ences, sometimes recognised, and sometimes 
only felt—decide the sentence on imaginations 


the most divine. The very trade of the critic 
himself—the necessity of his being witty, or 
brilliant, or sarcastic, for his own sake—is 
sufficient to disqualify him as a judge. Sad 
thought!—that the most sensitive, and gentle, 
and profound of human beings, should be de¬ 
pendent on casual caprice, on the passions of a 
bookseller, or on the necessities of a period! 

4. It may be perceived, from what we have 
already written, that we do not esteem criticism 
as a guide more than as a censor. The general 
effect on the public mind is, we fear, to dissi¬ 
pate and weaken. It spoils the freshest charms 
even of the poetry which it praises. It destroys 
all reverence for great poets, by making the 
world think of them as a species of culprits, 
who are to plead their genius as an excuse for 
their intrusion. Time has been when the poet 
himself—instead of submitting his works to 
the public as his master—called around him 
those whom he thought worthy to receive his 
precepts, and pointed out to them the divine 
lineaments, which he felt could never perish. 
They regarded him, with reverence, as most 
favoured of mortals. They delighted to sit in 
the seat of the disciple, not in that of the 
scorner. How much enjoyment have the peo¬ 
ple lost by being exalted into judges ! The 
ascent of literature has been rendered smooth 
and easy, but its rewards are proportion ably 
lessened in value. With how holy a zeal did 
the aspirant once gird himself to tread the un¬ 
worn path; how delectably was he refreshed 
by each plant of green ; how intensely did he 
enjoy every prospect, from the lone and em¬ 
bowered resting-places of his journey ! Now, 
distinctions are levelled—the zest of intellec¬ 
tual pleasures is taken away; and no one hour, 
like that of Archimedes, ever repays a life of 
toil. The appetite, satiated with luxuries cheaply 
acquired, requires new stimulants—even criti¬ 
cism palls—and private slander must be 
mingled with it to give the necessary relish. 
Happily, these evils will, at last, work out their 
own remedy. Scorn, of all human emotions, 
leaves the frailest monuments behind it. That 
light which now seems to play around the 
weapons of periodical criticism, is only like 
the electrical flame which, to the amazement 
of the superstitious, wreathes the sword of the 
Italian soldier on the approach of a storm, 
vapourish and fleeting. Those mighty poets 
of our time—who are now overcoming the 
derision of the critics—will be immortal wit¬ 
nesses of their shame. These will lift their 
heads, “like mountains when the mists are 
rolled away,” imperishable memorials of the 
true genius of our time, to the most distant age* 




MODERN PERIODICAL LITERATURE 


43 


MODERN PERIODICAL LITERATURE. 

[New Monthly Magazine.] 


Little did the authors of the Spectator, 
the Tattler, and the Guardian, think, while 
gratifying the simple appetites of our fathers 
for our periodical literature, how great would 
be the number, and how extensive the influ¬ 
ence, of their successors in the nineteenth cen¬ 
tury. Little did they know that they were 
preparing the way for this strange era in the 
world of letters, when Reviews and Magazines 
supersede the necessity of research or thought 
—when each month they become more spirited, 
more poignant, and more exciting—and on 
every appearance awaken a pleasing crowd of 
turbulent sensations in authors, contributors, 
and the few who belong to neither of these 
classes, unknown to our laborious ancestors. 
Without entering, at present, into the inquiry 
whether this system be, on the whole, as bene¬ 
ficial as it is lively, we will just lightly glance 
at the chief of its productions, which have 
such varied and extensive influences for good 
or for evil. 

The Edinburgh Review —though its power is 
now on the wane—has perhaps, on the whole, 
produced a deeper and more extensive impres¬ 
sion on the public mind than any other work 
of its species. It has two distinct characters— 
that of a series of original essays, and a criti¬ 
cal examination of the new works of particular 
authors. The first of these constitutes its 
fairest claim to honourable distinction. In this 
point of view, it has one extraordinary merit, 
that instead-of partially illustrating only one 
set of doctrines, it contains disquisitions equally 
convincing on almost all sides of almost all 
questions of literature or state policy. The 
“ bane and antidote” are frequently to be found 
in the ample compass of its volumes, and not 
unfrequently from the same pen. Its Essays 
on Political Economy display talents of a very 
uncommon order. Their writers have con¬ 
trived to make the dryest subjects enchanting, 
and the lowest and most debasing theories 
beautiful. Touched by them, the wretched 
dogmas of expediency have worn the air of 
venerable truths, and the degrading specula¬ 
tions of Malthus have appeared full of benevo¬ 
lence and of wisdom. They have exerted the 
uncommon art, while working up a sophism 
into every possible form, to seem as though 
they had boundless store of reasons to spare— 
a very exuberance of proof—which the clear¬ 
ness of their argument rendered it unnecessary 
to use. The celebrated Editor of this work, 
with little imagination—little genuine wit—and 
no clear view of any great and central princi¬ 
ples of criticism, has contrived to dazzle, to 
astonish, and occasionally to delight, multitudes 
of readers, and, at one period, to hold the tem¬ 
porary fate of authors at his will. His quali¬ 
ties are all singularly adapted to his office. 
Without deep feeling, which few can under¬ 
stand, he has a quick sensibility with which 


all sympathize; without a command of images, 
he has a glittering radiance of words which 
the most superficial may admire; neither too 
hard-hearted always to refuse his admiration, 
nor too kindly to suppress a sneer, he has been 
enabled to appear most witty, most wise, and 
most eloquent, to those who have chosen him 
for their oracle. As Reviewers, who have 
exercised a fearful power over the hearts and 
the destinies of young aspirants to fame, this 
gentleman, and his varied coadjutors, have 
done many great and irreparable wrongs. 
Their very motto, “ Judex damnatur cum no- 
cens absolvitur,” applied to works offending 
only by their want of genius, asserted a ficti¬ 
tious crime to be punished by a voluntary 
tribunal. It implied that the author of a dull 
book was a criminal, whose sensibilities justice 
required to be stretched on the rack, and whose 
inmost soul it was a sacred duty to lacerate! 
They even carried this atrocious absurdity 
farther—represented youthful poets as prima 
facie guilty; “swarming with a vicious fecun¬ 
dity, which invited and required destruction;” 
and spoke of the publication of verses as evi¬ 
dence, in itself, of want of sense, to be rebutted 
only by proofs of surpassing genius.* Thus 
the sweetest hopes were to be rudely broken— 
the loveliest visions of existence were to be 
dissipated—the most ardent and most innocent 
souls were to be wrung with unutterable an¬ 
guish—and a fearful risk incurred of crushing 
genius too mighty for sudden development, or 
of changing its energies into poison—in order 
that the public might be secured from the pos¬ 
sibility of worthlessness becoming attractive, 
or individuals shielded from the misery of 
looking into a work which would not tempt 
their farther perusal! But the Edinburgh Re¬ 
view has not been contented with deriding the 
pretensions of honest, but ungifted, aspirants ; 
it has pursued with misrepresentation and 
ridicule the loftiest and the gentlest spirits of 
the age, and has prevented the world, for a 
little season, from recognising and enjoying 
their genius. One of their earliest numbers 
contained an elaborate tissue of gross derision 
on that delicate production of feeling and of 
fancy—that fresh revival of the old English 
drama in all its antique graces—that piece of 
natural sweetness and of wood-land beauty— 
the tragedy of John Woodvil. They directed 
the same species of barbarous ridicule against 
the tale of Cristabel, trying to excite laughter 
by the cheap process of changing the names 
of its heroines into Lady C. and Lady G., and 
employing the easy art of transmuting its 
romantic incidents into the language of frivc 
lous life, to destroy the fame of its most pro¬ 
found and imaginative author. The mode of 
criticism adopted on this occasion might, it i* 


* See Ed. Rev., No. 43, p. 6& 




44 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


obvious, be used with equal success, to give 
to the purest and loftiest of works a ludicrous 
air. But the mightiest offence of the Edin¬ 
burgh Review is the wilful injustice which it 
has done to Wordsworth, or rather to the mul¬ 
titude whom it has debarred from the noblest 
stock of intellectual delights to be found in 
modern poetry, by the misrepresentation and 
the scorn which it has poured on his effusi^s. 
It would require a far longer essay than this to 
expose all the arts (for arts they have been) 
which the Review has employed to depreciate 
this holiest of living bards. To effect this 
malignant design, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and 
Southey, have been constantly represented as 
forming one perverse school or band of inno¬ 
vators—though there are perhaps no poets 
whose whole style and train of thought more 
essentially differ. To the same end, a few 
peculiar expressions—a few attempts at sim¬ 
plicity of expression on simple themes—a few 
extreme instances of naked language, which 
the fashionable gaudiness of poetry had incited 
—were dwelt on as exhibiting the poet’s intel¬ 
lectual character, while passages of the purest 
and most majestic beauty, of the deepest pathos, 
and of the noblest music, were regarded as 
unworthy even to mitigate the critic’s scorn. 
To this end, Southey—who, with all his rich 
and varied accomplishments, has comparative¬ 
ly but a small portion of Wordsworth’s genius 
—and whose “wild and wondrous lays” are 
the very antithesis to Wordsworth’s intense 
musings on humanity, and new consecrations 
of familiar things—was represented as redeem¬ 
ing the school which his mightier friend de¬ 
graded. To this end, even Wilson—one who 
had delighted to sit humbly at the feet of 
Wordsworth, and who derived his choicest in¬ 
spirations from him—was praised as shedding 
unwonted lustre over the barrenness of his 
master. But why multiply examples 1 Why 
attempt minutely to expose critics, who in 
“ thoughts which do often lie too deep for tears” 
can find matter only for jesting—who speak of 
the high, imaginative conclusion of the White 
Doe of Rylston as a fine compliment of which 
they do not know the meaning—and who begin 
a long and laborious article on the noblest 
philosophical poem in the world with—“ This 
uill never do?’ 

The Quarterly Rcvieiv, inferior to the Edin¬ 
burgh in its mode of treating matters of mere 
reason—and destitute of that glittering elo¬ 
quence of which Mr. Jeffrey has been so lavish 
—is far superior to it in its tone of sentiment, 
taste, and morals. It has often given intima¬ 
tions of a sense that there are “ more things 
in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in 
the philosophy” of the Northern Reviewers. 
It has not regarded the wealth of nations as 
every thing, and the happiness of nations as 
nothing—it has not rested all the foundations 
of good on the shifting expediences of time— 
it has not treated human nature as a mere 
problem for critics to analyze and explain. 
Its articles on travels have been richly tinged 
with a spirit of the romantic. Its views of 
religious sectarianism—unlike the flippant im¬ 
pieties of its rival—have been full of real 
kindliness and honest sympathy Its disquisi¬ 


tions on the state of the poor have been often 
replete with thoughts “ informed by nobleness,” 
and rich in examples of lowly virtue, which 
have had power to make the heart glow with 
a genial warmth which Reviews can rarely 
inspire. 

Its attack on Lady ?dorgan, whatever were 
the merits of her work, was one of the coarsest 
insults ever offered in print by man to woman. 
But perhaps its worst piece of injustice was 
its laborious attempt to torture and ruin Mr. 
Keats, a poet, then of extreme youth, whose 
work was wholly unobjectionable in its ten¬ 
dencies, and whose sole offence was a friend¬ 
ship for one of the objects of the Reviewer’s 
hatred, and his courage to avow it. We can 
form but a faint idea of what the heart of a 
young poet is, when he first begins to exercise 
his celestial faculties—how eager and tremu¬ 
lous are his hopes—how strange and tumultu¬ 
ous are his joys—how arduous is his difficulty 
of imbodying his rich imaginings in mortal 
language—how sensibly alive are all his feel¬ 
ings to the touches of this rough world ! Yet 
we can guess enough of these to estimate, in 
some degree, the enormity of a cool attack on 
a soul so delicately strung—with such aspira¬ 
tions and such fears—in the beginning of its 
high career. Mr. Keats—who now happily 
has attained the vantage-ground whence he 
may defy criticism—was cruelly or wantonly 
held up to ridicule in the Quarterly Review— 
to his transitory pain, we fear, but to the lasting 
disgrace of his traducer. Shelley has less 
ground of complaining—for he who attacks 
established institutions with a martyr’s spirit, 
must not be surprised if he is visited with a 
martyr’s doom. All ridicule of Keats was un¬ 
provoked insult and injury—an attack on Shel¬ 
ley was open and honest warfare, in which 
there is nothing to censure but the mode in 
which it was conducted. To deprecate his 
principles—to confute his reasonings—to ex¬ 
pose his inconsistencies—to picture forth \ r ivid- 
ly all that his critics believed respecting the 
tendencies of his works—was just and lawful; 
but to give currency to slanderous stories 
respecting his character, and above all, darkly 
to insinuate guilt which they forebore to de- 
velope, was unmanly, and could only serve to 
injure an honourable cause. Scarcely less 
disgraceful to the Review is the late elaborate 
piece of abuse against that great national work, 
the new edition of Stephens’s Greek Thesaurus. 
It must, however, be confessed, that several 
articles in recent numbers of the Review have 
displayed very profound knowledge of the sub¬ 
jects treated, and a deep and gentle spirit of 
criticism. 

The British Review is, both in evil and good, 
far below the two great Quarterly Journals. 
It is, however, very far from wanting ability, 
and as it lacks the gall of its contemporaries, 
and speaks in the tone of real conviction, 
though we do not subscribe to all its opinions, 
we offer it our best wishes. 

The Pamphleteer is a work of vejy meritorious 
design. Its execution, depending less on the 
voluntary power of its editor than that of any 
other periodical work, is necessarily unequal. 
On the whole, it has imbodied a great number 




MODERN PERIODICAL LITERATURE. 


45 


of valuable essays—which give a view of 
different sides of important questions, like the 
articles of the Edinburgh, but without the alloy 
which the inconsistency of the writers of the 
last mingle with their discussions. It has, we 
believe, on one or two occasions, suggested 
valuable hints to the legislature—especially in 
its view of the effects arising from the punish¬ 
ment of the pillory—which, although somewhat 
vicious and extravagant in its style, set the 
evils of that exhibition in so clear a light, that 
it was shortly after abolished, except in the 
instance of perjury. As the subject had not 
been investigated before, and the abolition fol¬ 
lowed so speedily, it may reasonably be pre¬ 
sumed that this essay had no small share in 
terminating an infliction in which the people 
were, at once, judges and executioners—all the 
remains of virtue were too often extinguished 
—and justice perpetually insulted in the execu¬ 
tion of its own sentences. 

The Retrospective Review is a bold experiment 
in these times, which well deserves to succeed, 
and has already attained far more notice than 
we should have expected to follow a periodical 
work which relates only to the past. To unveil 
with a reverent hand the treasures of other 
days—to disclose ties of sympathy with old 
time which else were hidden—to make us feel 
that beauty and truth are not things of yester¬ 
day—is the aim of no mean ambition, in which 
success will be without alloy, and failure with¬ 
out disgrace. There is an air of youth and 
inexperience doubtless about some of the arti¬ 
cles; but can any thing be more pleasing than 
to see young enthusiasm, instead of dwelling 
on the gauds of the “ignorant present,” fondly 
cherishing the venerableness of old time, and 
reverently listening to the voices of ancestral 
wisdom! The future is all visionary and un¬ 
real—the past is the truly grand, and substan¬ 
tial and abiding. The airy visions of hope 
vanish as we proceed; but nothing can deprive 
us of our interest in that which has been. It 
is good, therefore, to have one periodical work 
exclusively devoted to “ auld lang syne.” It is 
also pleasant to have one which, amidst an 
age whose literature is “rank with all unkind¬ 
ness,” is unaffected by party or prejudice, which 
feeds no depraved appetite, which ministers to 
no unworthy passion, but breathes one tender 
and harmonions spirit of revering love for the 
great departed. We shall rejoice, therefore, 
to see this work “rich with the spoils of time,” 
and gradually leading even the mere readers 
of periodical works, to feel with the gentle 
author of that divine sonnet, written in a blank 
leaf of Dugdale’s Monasticon:— 

‘•'Not harsh nor rugged are the winding ways’ 

Of hoar antiquity, but strewn with flowers.” 

These, we believe, are all the larger periodi¬ 
cal works of celebrity not devoted to merely 
scientific purposes. Of the lesser Reviews, 
the Monthly, as the oldest, claims the first no¬ 
tice; though we cannot say much in its praise. 
A singular infelicity has attended many of its 
censures. To most of those who have con¬ 
duced to the revival of poetry it has opposed) 
its jeers and its mockeries. Cowper, who firstj 
restored “free nature’s grace” to our pictures 


of rural scenery—whose timid and delicate 
soul shrunk from the slighest encounter with 
the world—whose very satire breathed gentle¬ 
ness and good-will to all his fellows—was 
agonized by its unfeeling scorn. Kirke White, 
another spirit almost too gentle for earth— 
painfully struggling by his poetical efforts to 
secure the scanty means of laborious study, 
was crushed almost to earth by its pitiable 
sentence, and his brief span of life filled with 
bitter anguish. This Review seems about 
twenty years behind the spirit of the times; 
and this, for a periodical work, is fully equal 
to a century in former ages. 

Far other notice does the Eclectic Review 
require. It is, indeed, devoted to a party; and 
to a party whose opinions are not very favour¬ 
able to genial views of humanity, or to deep 
admiration of human genius. But not all the 
fiery zeal of sectarianism which has sometimes 
blazed through its disquisitions—nor all the 
strait-laced nicety with which it is sometimes 
disposed to regard earthly enjoyments—nor all 
the gloom which its spirit of Calvinism sheds 
on the mightiest efforts of virtue—can prevent 
us from feeling the awe-striking influences of 
honest principle — of hopes which are not 
shaken by the fluctuations of time—of faith 
which looks to “ temples not made with hands, 
eternal in the heavens.” The Eclectic Review, 
indeed, in its earliest numbers, seemed resolved 
to oppose the spirit of its religion to the spirit 
of intellect and humanity, and even went to 
the fearful excess of heaping the vilest abuse 
on Shakspeare, and of hinting that his soul 
was mourning in the torments of hell, over 
the evils which his works had occasioned in 
the world.* But its conductors have since 


* This marvellous effusion of bigotry is contained in 
an article on Twiss’s Index to Shakspeare in the third 
volume of the Review, p. 75. The Reviewer commences 
with the following tremendous sentence :— 

“If the compiler of these volumes had been properly 
sensible of the value of time, and the relation which the 
employment of it bears to his eternal state, we should 
not have had to present our readers with the pitiable 
spectacle of a man advanced in years consuming the 
embers of vitality in making a complete verbal Index to 
the Plays of Shakspeare.” 

After acknowledging the genius of Shakspeare, the 
Reviewer observes, “ He has been called, and justly too, 
the ‘Poet of Nature.’ A slight acquaintance with the 
religion of the Bible will show that it is of human nature 
in its worst shape, deformed by the basest passions, and 
agitated by the most vicious propensities, that the poet 
became the priest; and the incense offered at the altar 
of his goddess will spread its poisonous fumes over the 
hearts of his countrymen, till the memory of his works is 
extinct. Thousands of unhappy spirits, and thousands 
yet to increase their number, will everlastingly look back 
with unutterable anguish on the nights and days in which 
the plays of Shakspeare ministered to their guilty de¬ 
lights.”’ The Reviewer further complains of the inscrip¬ 
tion on Garrick’s tomb (which is absurd enough, though 
on far different grounds)—as “the absurd and impious 
epitaph upon the tablet raised to one of the miserable ret (liters 
of his impurities /” “We commiserate,’’’continues the 
critic, “ the heart of the man who can read the following 
lines without indignation:— 

‘And till eternity, with power sublime, 

Shall mark the mortal hour of hoary time, 
Shakspeare and Garrick, like twin stars, shall shine, 
And each irradiate with a beam divine.’ 

Far nobile fratrum! Your fame shall last during the em¬ 
pire of vice and misery, in the extension of which you 
have acted so great a part! We make no apology for our 
sentiments, unfashionable as they are. Feeling the ini 
portance of the condition of man as a moral agent, ac 
countable not merely for the direct effects, but also for 
the remotest influence of his actions, t chile we execrate the 





46 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


changed, or have grown wiser. Their Reviews 
of poetry have been, perhaps, on the whole, in 
the purest and the gentlest spirit of any which 
have been written in this age of criticism. 
Without resigning their doctrines, they have 
softened and humanized those w r ho profess 
them, and have made their system of religion 
look smilingly, while they have striven to pre¬ 
serve it unspotted from the world. If occa¬ 
sionally they introduce their pious feelings 
where we regard them as misplaced, we may 
smile, but not in scorn.* * Their zeal is better 
than heartless indifference—their honest de¬ 
nunciations are not like the sneers of envy or 
the heartless jests which a mere desire of ap¬ 
plause inspires. It is something to have real 
principle in times like these—a sense of things 
beyond our frail nature—even where the feeling 
of the eternal is saddened by too harsh and 
exclusive views of God, and of his children: 
for, as observed by one of our old poets, 

-“Unless above himself he can 

Erect himself, how poor a thing is man !”t 

The British Critic is a highly respectable 
work, which docs not require our praise, or 
offer any marks for our censure. It is, in a 
great measure, devoted to the interests of the 
church and of her ministers. It has sometimes 
shown a little sourness in its controversial 
discussions—but this is very different, indeed, 
from using cold sneers against unopposing 
authors. Its articles of criticism on poetry— 
if not adorned by any singular felicity of ex¬ 
pression—have often been, of late, at once 
clear-sighted and gentle. 

The Edinburgh Monthly Review is, on the 
whole, one of the ablest and fairest of the 
Monthly Reviews, though somewhat dispro¬ 
portion ably filled w r ith disquisitions on matters 
of state policy. 

Few literary changes within the late change¬ 
ful years have been more remarkable than the 
alteration in the style and spirit of the maga¬ 
zines. Time was when their modest ambition 
reached only to the reputation of being the 
“abstracts and brief chronicles” of passing 
events—when they were well pleased to afford 
vent to the sighs of a poetical lover, or to give 
light fluttering for a month to an epigram on a 
lady’s fan—when a circumstantial account of 

names , we cannot but shudder at the state of those who have 
opened fountains of impurity at which fashion leads its suc¬ 
cessive generations greedily to drink .' 1 ' 1 —Merciful Heaven! 

* We will give an instance of this—with a view to 
exhibit the peculiarities into which exclusive feelings 
lead ; for observation, not for derision. In a very beau¬ 
tiful article on Wordsworth’s Excursion, the critic 
notices a stanza, among several, on the death of Fox, 
where the poet—evidently not referring to the questions 
of immortality and judgment, but to the deprivations 
sustained by the world in the loss of the objects of its 
admiration—exclaims, 

“A power is passing from the earth 
To breathless nature’s vast abyss; 

But when the mighty pass away, 

What is it more than this, 

That man, who is from God sent forth, 

Doth yet to God return ? 

Such ebb and flow will ever be, 

Then wherefore shall we mourn ?” 

On which the Reviewer observes; “The question in 
the last two lines needs no answer: to that in the four 
preceding ones we must reply distinctly, ‘ It is appointed 
to men once to die, but after this the judgment.’ ”—Heb. 
>x. v. 27. 

t Daniel. 


a murder, or an authentic description of a 
birth-day dress, or the nice development of a 
family receipt, communicated, in their pages, 
to maiden ladies of a certain age an incalcula¬ 
ble pleasure—and when the learned decipher¬ 
ing of an inscription on some rusty coin suf¬ 
ficed to give them a venerableness in the eyes 
of the old. If they, then, ever aspired to criti¬ 
cism, it was in mere kindness—to give a 
friendly greeting to the young adventurer, and 
afford him a taste of unmingled pleasure at 
the entrance of his perilous journey. Now 
they are full of wit, satire, and pungent remark 
—touching familiarly on the profoundest ques¬ 
tions of philosophy as on the lightest varieties 
of manners—sometimes overthrowing a system 
with a joke, and destroying a reputation in the 
best humour in the world. One magazine— 
the Gentleman's —almost alone retains “the 
homely beauty of the good old cause,” in pris¬ 
tine simplicity of style. This periodical work 
is worthy of its title. Its very dulness is 
agreeable to us. It is as destitute of sprightli¬ 
ness and of gall as in the first of its years. Its an¬ 
tiquarian disquisitions are very pleasant, giving 
us the feeling of sentiment without seeming to 
obtrude it on us, or to be designed for a dis¬ 
play of the peculiar sensibility of their authors. 
We would not on any account lose the veteran 
Mr. Urban—though he will not, of course, suf¬ 
fice as a substitute for his juvenile competitors 
—but we heartily wish that he may go flourish¬ 
ing on in his green old age and honest self- 
complacency, to tell old stories, and remind us 
of old times, undisturbed by his gamesome 
and ambitious progeny! 

Yet we must turn from his gentle work to 
gaze on the bright Aurora Borealis, the new 
and ever-varying Northern Light— Blackivood's 
Magazine. We remember no work of which 
so much might be truly said, both in censure 
and in eulogy—no work, at some times so 
profound, and at others so trifling—one mo¬ 
ment so instinct with noble indignation, the 
next so pitifully falling into the errors it had 
denounced—in one page breathing the deepest 
and the kindliest spirit of criticism, in another 
condescending to give currency to the lowest 
calumnies. The air of young life—the exube¬ 
rance both of talent and of animal spirits— 
which this work indicates, will excuse much 
of that wantonness which evidently arises from 
the fresh spirit of hope and of joy. But there 
are some of its excesses which nothing can 
palliate, which can be attributed to nothing 
but malignant passions, or to the baser desire 
of extending its sale. Less censurable, but 
scarcely less productive of unpleasant results, 
is its practice of dragging the peculiarities, the 
conversation, and domestic habits of distin¬ 
guished individuals into public view, to gratify 
a diseased curiosity at the expense of men 
by whom its authors have been trusted. Such 
a course, if largely followed, would destroy all 
that is private and social in life, and leave us 
nothing but our public existence. How must 
the joyous intercourses of society be chilled, 
and the free unbosoming of the soul be checked, 
by the feeling that some one is present who 
will put down every look, and word, and tone, 
in a note-book, and exhibit them to the com- 






47 


on The genius and writings of wordsworth. 


mon gaze! If the enshading sanctities of life 
are to be cut away, as in Peter’s Letters, or in 
the Letters from the Lakes—its joys will 
speedily perish. When they can no longer 
nestle in privacy, they will wither. We can¬ 
not, however, refuse to Blackwood’s contribu¬ 
tors the praise of great boldness in throwing 
away the external dignities of literature, and 
mingling their wit and eloquence and poetry 
with the familiarities of life, with an ease 
which nothing but the consciousness of great 
and genuine talent could inspire or justify. 
Most of their jests have, we think, been carried 
a little too far. The town begins to sicken of 
their pugilistic articles; to nauseate the blended 
language of Olympus and St. Giles’s; to long 


for inspiration from a purer spring than Bel- 
sher’s tap; and to desire sight of Apollo and 
the Muses in a brighter ring than that of 
Moulsey-hurst. We ought not to forget the 
debt which we owe to this magazine for infus¬ 
ing something of the finest and profoundest 
spirit of the German writers into our criticism, 
and for its “ high and hearted” eulogies of the 
greatest, though not the most popular of our 
living poets. 

We have thus impartially, we think, endea¬ 
voured to perform the delicate task of charac¬ 
terizing the principal contemporaries and rivals 
of the New Monthly Magazine;—of which 
our due regard to the Editor’s modesty forbids 
us to speak. 


ON THE GENIUS AND WRITINGS OF WORDSWORTH. 

[New Monthly Magazine.] 


How charming is divine Philosophy! 

Not harsh nor crabbed, as dull fools suppose, 

But musical as is Apollo’s lute!—M ilton. 

Blessings be on him and immortal praise. 

Who gave us nobler loves and nobler cares, 

The Poet who on earth hath made us heirs 

Of truth and pure delight by heavenly lays!—W ordsworth. 


Our readers will be disappointed if they ex¬ 
pect to find in this article any of the usual 
flippancies of criticism. Were we accustom¬ 
ed to employ them, its subject would utterly 
confound us. Strange is their infatuation 
who can fancy that the merits of a great poet 
are subjected to their decision, and that they 
have any authority to pass judicial censures, 
or confer beneficent praises, on one of the di- 
vinest of intellects ! We shall attempt to set 
forth the peculiar immunities and triumphs of 
Wordsworth’s genius, not as critics, but as 
disciples. To him our eulogy is nothing. But 
we would fain induce our readers to follow us 
“where we have garnered up our hearts,” and 
would endeavour to remove those influences 
by which malignity and prejudice have striven 
to deter them from seeking some of the holiest 
of those living springs of delight which poets 
have opened for their species. 

A minute discussion of Wordsworth’s system 
will not be necessary to our design. It is 
manifestly absurd to refer to it as a test of his 
poetical genius. When an author has given 
numerous creations to the world, he has fur¬ 
nished positive evidence of the nature and ex¬ 
tent of his powers, which must preclude the 
necessity of deducing an opinion of them from 
the truth or falsehood of his theories. One 
noble imagination—one profound and affect¬ 


ing sentiment—or one new gleam cast on the 
inmost recesses of the soul, is more than a 
sufficient compensation fora thousand critical 
errors. False doctrines of taste can endure 
only for a little season, but the productions of 
genius are “for all time.” Its discoveries 
cannot be lost—its images will not perish— 
its most delicate influences cannot be dissi¬ 
pated by the changes of times and of seasons.' 
It may be a curious and interesting question, 
whether a poet laboriously builds up his fame 
with purpose and judgment, or, as has most 
falsely been said of Shakspeare, “grows im¬ 
mortal in his own despite;” but it cannot af¬ 
fect his highest claims to the gratitude and 
admiration of the world. If Milton preferred 
Paradise Regained to Paradise Lost, does that 
strange mistake detract from our revering 
love! What would be our feeling towards 
critics, who should venture to allude to it as 
a proof that his works were unworthy of pe¬ 
rusal, and decline an examination of those 
works themselves on the ground that his per¬ 
verse taste sufficiently proved his want of 
genius! Yet this is the mode by which po¬ 
pular Reviewers have attempted to depreciate 
Wordsworth—they have argued from his theo¬ 
ries to his poetry, instead of examining the 
poetry itself—as if their reasoning was better 
than the fact in question, or as if one eternal 







48 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. ' 


image set up in the stateliest region of poesy, 
had not value to outweigh all the truths of 
criticism, or to atone for all its errors'? 

Not only have Wordsworth’s merits been 
improperly rested on his system, but that 
system itself has been misrepresented with 
no common baseness. From some of the 
attacks directed against it, a reader might 
infer that it recommended the choice of the 
meanest subjects, and their treatment in the 
meanest way ; and that it not only represented 
poetry as fitly employed on things in them¬ 
selves low and trivial, but that it forbade the 
clustering and delicate fancies about them, or 
the shedding on them any reconciling and 
softening lustre. Multitudes, indeed, have 
wondered as they read, not only that any per¬ 
sons should be deluded by its perverse insi¬ 
pidities, but that critics should w r aste their ridi¬ 
cule on an author who resigned at once all 
pretensions to the poetic art. In reality, this 
calumniated system has. only reference to the 
diction, and to the subjects of poetry. It has 
merely taught, that the diction of poetry is not 
different from that of prose, and suggested 
that themes hitherto little dwelt on, were not 
unsuited to the bard’s divinest uses. Let us 
briefly examine what ground of offence there 
is in the assertion or application of these 
positions. 

Some have supposed that by rejecting a 
diction as peculiar to poetry, Wordsworth 
denied to it those qualities which are its es¬ 
sence, and those “harmonious numbers” 
which its thoughts “ voluntarily move.” Were 
his language equivocal, which it is not, the 
slightest glance at his works would show that 
he could have no design to exclude from it the 
stateliest imaginings, the most felicitous allu¬ 
sions, or the choicest and most varied music. 
He objected only to a peculiar phraseology— 
a certain hacknied strain of inversion—which 
had been set up as distinguishing poetry from 
prose, and which, he contended, was equally 
false in either. What is there of pernicious 
heresy^ in this, unless we make the crafty 
politician’s doctrine, that speech was given 
to man to conceal his thoughts, the great 
principle of poetry? If words are fitly com¬ 
bined only to convey ideas to the mind, each 
word having a fixed meaning in itself, no dif¬ 
ferent mode of collocation can be requisite 
when the noblest sentiment is to be imbodied, 
from that which is proper w r hen the dryest 
fact is to be asserted. Each term employed 
by a poet has as determinate an office—as 
clearly means one thing as distinguished from 
all others—as a mathematician’s scientific 
Ph rases. If a poet wishes lucidly to convey 
a grand picture to the mind, there can be no 
reason w r hy he should resort to another mode 
of speech than that which he w r ould employ 
in delivering the plainest narrative. He will, 
of course, use other and probably more beau¬ 
tiful words, because they properly belong to 
his subject; but he will not use any different 
order in their arrangement, because in both 
cases his immediate object is the same—the 
clear communication of his own idea to the 
mind of his reader. And this is true not only 
of the chief object of the passage, but of every 


hinted allusion, or nice shade of feeling, which 
may adorn it. If by “poetic diction” is in¬ 
tended the vivid expression of poetic thoughts, 
to annihilate it, is to annihilate poetry; but 
if it means certain ornamental phrases and 
forms of language not necessary to such ex¬ 
pression, it is, at best, but a splendid error. 
Felicity of language can never be other than 
the distinct expression of felicitous thought. 
The only art of diction in poetry, as in prose, 
is the nice bodying forth of each delicate vi¬ 
bration of the feelings, and each soft shade of 
the images, in words which at once make us 
conscious of their most transient beauty. At 
all events, there was surely no offence in an 
individual’s rejecting the aid of a style regard¬ 
ed as poetic, and relying for his fame on the 
naked majesty of his conceptions. The tri¬ 
umph is more signal when the Poet uses 
language as a mirror, clear, and itself invisi¬ 
ble, to reflect his creations in their native 
hues,—than when he employs it as a stained 
and fallacious medium to exhibit its own va¬ 
rieties of tint, and to show the objects which 
it partially reveals in its own prismatic 
colouring. 

But it is said that the subjects of Words¬ 
worth’s poetry are not in themselves so lofty 
as those which his noblest predecessors have 
chosen. If this be true, and he has yet suc¬ 
ceeded in discovering within them poetical 
affinities, or in shedding on them a new con¬ 
secration, he does not surely deserve ill of his 
species. He has left all our old objects of 
veneration uninjured, and has enabled us to 
recognise new ones in the peaceful and fa¬ 
miliar courses of our being. The question is 
not whether there are more august themes 
than those which he has treated, but whether 
these last have any interest, as seen in the 
light which he has cast around them. If they 
have, the benefits which he has conferred on 
humanity are more signal, and the triumph 
of his own powers is more undivided and 
more pure, than if he had treated on subjects 
which we have been accustomed to revere. 
We are more indebted to one w r ho opens to 
us a new and secluded pathway in the regions 
of fantasy with its own verdant inequalities 
and delicate overshadings of foliage, than if 
he had stepped majestically in the broad and 
beaten highway to swell the triumphant pro¬ 
cession of laurelled bards. Is it matter of 
accusation that a poet has opened visions of 
glory about the ordinary walks of life—that 
he has linked holiest associations to things 
which hitherto have been regarded without 
emotion—that he has made beauty “ a simple 
product of the common day ?” Shall he be 
denied the poetic faculty, w r ho, without the at¬ 
tractions of story—without the blandishments 
of diction—without even the aid of those as¬ 
sociations which have encrusted themselves 
around the oldest themes of the poet, has for 
many years excited the animosities of the 
most popular critics, and mingled the love 
and admiration of his genius with the life¬ 
blood of hearts neither unreflecting nor un¬ 
gentle ? 

But most of the subjects of Mr. Wordsworth, 
I though not arrayed in any adventitious pomp, 




ON THE GENIUS AND WRITINGS OF WORDSWORTH. 


49 


have a real and innate grandeur. True it is, 
that he moves not among the regalities, but 
among the humanities of his art. True it is, 
that his poetry does not “make its bed and 
procreant cradle” in the “jutting, frieze, cor¬ 
nice, or architrave” of the glorious edifices of 
human power. The universe, in its naked 
majesty, and man in the plain dignity of his 
nature, are his favourite themes. And is there 
no might, no glory, no sanctity in these 1 
Earth has her own venerablenesses—her awful 
forests, which have darkened her hills for 
ages with tremendous gloom; her mysterious 
springs pouring out everlasting waters from 
unsearchable recesses; her wrecks of ele¬ 
mental contests ; her jagged rocks, monumental 
of an earlier world. The lowliest of her 
beauties has an antiquity beyond that of the 
pyramids. The evening breeze has the old 
sweetness which it shed over the fields of Ca¬ 
naan, when Isaac went out to meditate. The 
Nile swells with its rich waters towards the 
bulrushes of Egypt, as when the infant Moses 
nestled among them, watched by the sisterly 
love of Miriam. Zion’s hill has not passed 
away with its temple, nor lost its sanctity 
amidst the tumultuous changes around it, nor 
even by the accomplishment of that awful 
religion of types and symbols which once was 
enthroned on its steeps. The sun to which the 
poet turns his eye is the same which shone 
over Thermopylae; and the wind to which he 
listens swept over Salamis, and scattered the 
armaments of Xerxes. Is a poet utterly de¬ 
prived of fitting themes, to whom ocean, earth, 
and sky, are open—who has an eye for the 
most evanescent of nature’s hues, and the 
most ethereal of her graces—who can “live in 
the rainbow and play in the plighted clouds,” 
or send into our hearts the awful loneliness of 
regions “consecrate to eldest time!” Is there 
nothing in man, considered abstractedly from 
the distinctions of this world—nothing in a 
being who is in the infancy of an immortal 
life—who is lackeyed by “a thousand liveried 
angels”—who is even “ splendid in ashes and 
pompous in the grave”—to awaken ideas of 
permanence, solemnity, and grandeur! Are 
there no themes sufficiently exalted for poetry 
in the midst of death and of life—in the desires 
and hopes which have their resting-place near 
the throne of the Eternal—in affections, strange 
and wondrous in their working, and uncon¬ 
querable by time, or anguish, or destiny! 
How little, comparatively, of allusion is there 
even in Shakspeare, whose genius will not be 
regarded as rigid or austere, to other venera¬ 
blenesses than those of the creation, and to 
qualities less common than the human heart! 
The very luxuries which surround his lovers 
—the pensive sweetnesses which steal away 
the sting from his saddest catastrophies—are 
drawn from man’s universal immunities, and 
the eldest sympathies of the universe. The 
divinity which “hedges his kings” is only 
humanity’s finer essence. Even his Lear is 
great only in intellectual might and in the ter¬ 
rible strangeness of his afflictions. While in¬ 
vested with the pomp and circumstance of his 
station, he is froward, impatient, thankless- 
less than a child in his liberality and in his 

7 


resentments; but when he is cast abroad to 
seek a lodging with the owl, and to endure the 
fury of the elements, and is only a poor and 
despised old man, the exterior crust which a 
life of prosperity had hardened over his soiil 
is broken up by the violence of his sorrows, 
his powers expand within his worn and washed 
frame, his spirit awakens in its long-forgotten 
strength, and even in the wanderings of dis¬ 
traction gives hints of the profoundest philoso¬ 
phy, and manifests a real kindliness of nature 
—a sweet and most affecting courtesy—of 
which there was no vestigejn the days of his 
pride. The reality of Richard lies not in 
“ compliment extern”—the philosophy of Ham¬ 
let has a princeliness above that of his rank 
—and the beauties of Imogen are shed into 
her soul only by the selectest influences of 
creation. 

The objects which have been usually re¬ 
garded as the most poetical, derive from the 
soul itself the far larger share of their poetical 
qualities. All their power to elevate, to delight, 
or to awe us, which does not arise from mere 
form, colour, and proportion, is manifestly 
drawn from the instincts common to the spe¬ 
cies. The affections have first consecrated all 
that they revere. “ Cornice, frieze, jutting, or 
architrave,” are fit nestling-places for poetry, 
chiefly as they are the symbols of feelings of 
grandeur and duration in the hearts of the be¬ 
holders. A poet, then, who seeks at once for 
beauty and sublimity in their native home of 
the human soul—who resolves “non sectari 
rivulos sed petere fontes ”—can hardly be accused 
with justice of rejecting the themes most 
worthy of a bard. His office is, indeed, more 
arduous than if he selected those subjects 
about which hallowing associations have long 
clustered, and which other poets have already 
rendered sacred. But if he can discover new 
depths of affection in the soul—or throw new 
tinges of loveliness on objects hitherto com¬ 
mon, he ought not to be despised in proportion 
to the severity of the work, and the absence 
of extrinsic aid ! Wordsworth’s persons are 
not invested with antique robes, nor clad in the 
symbols of worldly pomp, but they are “ap¬ 
parelled in celestial light.” By his power 
“the bare earth and mountains bare” are 
covered with an imaginative radiance more 
holy than that which old Greek poets shed 
over Olympus. The world, as consecrated by 
his poetic wisdom, is an enchanted scene— 
redolent with sweet humanity, and vocal with 
“echoes from beyond the grave.” 

We shall now attempt to express the reasons 
for our belief in Wordsworth’s genius, by first 
giving a few illustrations of his chief faculties, 
and then considering them in their application 
to the uses of philosophical poetry. 

We allude first to the descriptive faculty, 
because, though not the least popular, it is the 
lowest which Wordsworth possesses. He 
shares it with many others, though few, we 
think, enjoy it in so eminent a degree. It is 
difficult, indeed, to select passages from his 
works which are merely descriptive; but those 
which approach nearest to portraiture, and 
are least imbued with fantasy, are master¬ 
pieces in their kind. Take, for example, the 



60 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


following picture of masses of vapour reced¬ 
ing among the steeps and summits of the 
mountains, after a storm, beneath an azure 
sky; the earlier part of which seem almost 
like another glimpse of Milton’s heaven; and 
the conclusion of which impresses us solemnly 
with the most awful visions of Hebrew pro¬ 
phecy : 

-“ A step, 

A single step which freed me from the skirts 
Of the blind vapour, open’d to my view 
Glory beyond all glory ever seen 
By waking sense or by the dreaming soul— 

The appearance instantaneously disclosed, 

Was of a mighty city—boldly say 
A wilderness of building, sinking far 
And self-withdrawn into a wondrous depth 
Far sinking into splendour—without end! 

Fabric it seemed of diamond and of gold, 

With alabaster domes and silver spires'; 

And blazing terrace upon terrace high 
Uplifted: here serene pavilions bright 
In avenues disposed; there towers begirt 
With battlements that on their restless fronts 
Bore stars, illumination of all gems 1 
O ’twas an unimaginable sight; 

Clouds, mists, streams, watery rocks, and emerald turf, 
Clouds of all tincture, rocks and sapphire sky, 
Confused, commingled, mutually inflamed, 

Molten together, and composing thus, 

Each lost in each, that marvellous array 
Of temple, palace, citadel, and huge 
Fantastic pomp of structure without name, 

In fleecy folds voluminous enwrapp’d. 

Right in the midst, where interspace appear’d 
Of open court, an object like a throne 
Beneath a shining canopy of state 
Stood fix’d, and fix’d resemblances were seen 
To implements of ordinary use, 

But vast in size, in substance glorified; 

Such as by Hebrew prophets were beheld 
In vision—forms uncouth of mightiest power, 

For admiration and mysterious awe!” 

Excursion , B. II. 

Contrast with this the delicate grace of the 
following picture, which represents the White 
Doe of Rylstone—that most beautiful of mys¬ 
teries—on her Sabbath visit to the grave of her 
sainted lady:— 

“ Soft—the dusky trees between 
And down the path through the open green 
Where is no living thing to be seen; 

And through yon gateway where is found, 
Beneath the arch with ivy bound, 

Free entrance to the church-yard ground; 

And right across the verdant sod 
Towards the very house of God ; 

—Comes gliding in with lovely gleam, 

Comes gliding in serene and slow, 

Soft and silent as a dream, 

A solitary Doe! 

White is she as lily in June; 

And beauteous as the silver moon, 

When out of sight the clouds are driven 
And she is left alone in heaven; 

Or like a ship some gentle day 
In sunshine sailing far away, 

A glittering ship, that hath the plain 
Of ocean for Iter own domain. 

* * * * 

What harmonious pensive changes 
Wait upon her as she ranges 
Round and through this pile of state, 

Overthrown and desolate! 

Now a step or two her way 
Is through space of open day, 


Where the enamour’d sunny light 
Brightens her that was so bright; 

Now doth a delicate shadow fall, 

Falls upon her like a breath, 

From some lofty arch or wall, 

As she passes underneath: 

Now some gloomy nook partakes 
Of the glory which she makes,— 

Iligh-ribb’d vault of stone, or cell 
With perfect cunning framed, as well 
Of stone and ivy, and the spread 
Of the elder’s bushy head; 

Some jealous and forbidding cell, 

That doth the living stars repel, 

And where no flower hath leave to dwell. 

* * * * 

-Iler’s are eyes serenely bright, 

And on she moves—with pace how light! 

Nor spares to stoop her head, and taste 
The dewy turf, with flowers bestrown; 

And in this way she fares, till at last 
Beside the ridge of a grassy grave 
In quietness she lays her down; 

Gently as a weary wave 

Sinks, when the summer breeze hath died. 

Against an anchor’d vessel’s side; 

Even so, without distress, doth she 
Lie down in peace, and lovingly.” 

White Doe of Rylstone, Canto I. 

What, as mere description, can be more 
masterly than the following picture of the 
mountain solitude, where a dog was found, 
after three months’ watching by his master’s 
body—though the touches which send the feel¬ 
ing of deep loneliness into the soul, and the 
bold imagination which represents the huge 
recess as visited by elemental presences, are 
produced by higher than descriptive powers 1 — 

“ It was a cove, a huge recess, 

That keeps till June December’s snow; 

A lofty precipice in front, 

A silent tarn below! 

Far in the bosom of Helvellyn, 

Remote from public road or dwelling, 

Pathway, or cultivated land; 

From trace of human foot or hand. 

There sometimes does a leaping fish 
Send through thp Tarn a lonely cheer; 

The crags repeat the raven’s croak 
In symphony austere ; 

Thither the rainbow comes, the cloud; 

And mists that spread the flying shroud, 

And sunbeams; and the sounding blast, 

That if it could, would hurry past, 

But that enormous barrier binds it fast.” 

We must abstain from farther examples of 
the descriptive faculty, and allude to that far 
higher gift which Wordsworth enjoys in his 
profound acquaintance with the sanctities of 
the soul. He does not make us feel the 
strength of the passions, by their violent con¬ 
tests in a transient storm, but the measureless 
depth of the affections when they are stillest 
and most holy. We often meet in his works 
with little passages in which we seem almost 
to contemplate the well-springs of pure emo¬ 
tion and gentle pathos, and to see the old clefts 
in the rock of humanity whence they arise. In 
these we may not rarely perceive the true ele¬ 
ments of tales of the purest sentiment and 
most genuine tragedies. No poet has done 
such justice to the depth and the fulness of 
maternal love. What, for instance, can be 
more tear-moving than these exclamations of 





ON THE GENIUS AND WRITINGS OF WORDSWORTH. 


a mother, who for seven years has heard no 
tidings of an only child, abandoning the false 
stay of a pride which ever does unholy violence 
to the sufferer?— 

“Neglect me ! no, I suffered long 
From that ill thought; and, being blind, 

Said, ‘ Pride shall help me in my wrong; 

Kind mother have I been, as kind 
As ever breathed and that is true ; 

I’ve wet my path with tears like dew, 

Weeping for hint when no one knew. 

My son, if thou be humbled, poor, 

Hopeless of honour, or of gain, 

Oh ! do not dread thy mother’s door; 

Think not of me.with grief or pain : 

I now can see with better eyes ; 

And worldly grandeur I despise, 

And fortune with her gifts and lies,” 

How grand and fearful are the following 
conjectures of her agony! 

“ Perhaps some dungeon hears thee groan, 

Maim’d, mangled by inhuman men ; 

Or thou upon a desert thrown 
Inheritest the lion’s den ; 

Or hast been summon’d to the deep 
Thou, thou and all thy mates, to keep, 

An incommunicable sleep.” 

And how triumphant does the great instinct 
appear in its vanquishing even the dread of 
mortal chilliness—asking and looking for spec¬ 
tres—and concluding that their appearance is 
not possible, because they come not to its in¬ 
tense cravings:— 

“ I look for ghosts ; but none will force 
Their way to me ; ’tis falsely said 
That ever there was intercourse 
Between the living and the dead; 

For surely then I should have sight 
Of him I wait for day and night, 

With love and longings infinite.” 

Of the same class is the poem on the death 
of a noble youth, who fell in attempting to 
bound over a chasm of the Wharf, and left his 
mother childless.—What a volume of thought 
is there in the little stanzas which follows:— 

“ If for a lover the lady wept, 

A solace she might borrow 
From death, and from the passion of death,— 

Old Wharf might heal her sorrow. 

She weeps not for the wedding-day, 

Which was to be to-morrow; 

Her hope was a farther-looking hope, 

And her’s is a mother’s sorrow !” 

Here we are made to feel not only the vast¬ 
ness of maternal affection, but its difference 
from that of lovers. The last being a passion, 
has a tendency to grasp and cling to objects 
which may sustain it, and thus fixes even on 
those things which have swallowed its hopes, 
and draws them into its likeness. Death itself 
thus becomes a passion to one whom it has 
bereaved; or the waters which flowed over 
the object of once happy love, become a solace 
to the mourner, who nurses holy visions by 
their side. But an instinct which has none of 
that tendency to go beyond itself, when its only 
object is lost, has no earthly relief, but is left 
utterly desolate. The hope of a lover looks 
chiefly to a single point of time as its goal;— 


51 

that of a mother is spread equally over exist 
ence, and when cut down, at once the blossom 
ing expectations of a whole life are withered 
for ever. 

Can any thing be more true or intense than 
the following description of remorse, rejecting 
the phantoms of superstitious horror as power¬ 
less, and representing lovely and uncomplain¬ 
ing forms of those whose memories the sufferer 
had dishonoured by his errors, casting their 
silent looks perpetually upon him : 

-“ Feebly must they have felt 

Who, in old time, attired with snakes and whips 
The vengeful Furies. Beautiful regards 
Were turned on me—the face ofher I loved ; 

The wife and mother pitifully fixing 
Tender reproaches, insupportable!” 

We will give but one short passage more to 
show the depth of Wordsworth’s insight into 
our nature—but it is a passage which we 
think unequalled in its kind in the compass of 
poetry. Never surely was such a glimpse of 
beatific vision opened amidst mortal affliction; 
such an elevation given to seeming weakness ; 
such consolation ascribed to bereaved love by 
the very heightening of its own intensities. 
The poet contends, that those whom we regard 
as dying broken-hearted for the loss of friends, 
do not really perish through despair; but have 
such vivid prospects of heaven, and such a 
present sense that those who have been taken 
from them are waiting for them there, that 
they wear themselves away in longings after 
the reality, and so hasten to enjoy it:— 

- “ Full oft the innocent sufferer sees 

Too clearly; feels too vividly; and longs 
To realize the vision with intense 
And over-constant yearning—there—there lies 
,The excess by which the balance is destroy’d. 

Too, too contracted are these walls of flesh, 

This vital warmth too cold, these visual orbs, 
Though inconceivably endow’d, too dim 
For any passion of the soul that leads 
To ecstasy ; and, all the crooked paths 
Of time and change disdaining, takes its course 
Along the line of limitless desires .” 

But the imaginative faculty is that with 
which Wordsworth is most eminently gifted. 
As the term imagination is often very loosely 
employed, it will be necessary for us here to 
state as clearly as possible our idea of its 
meaning. In our sense, it is that power by 
which the spiritualities of our nature and the sen¬ 
sible images derived from the material universe are 
commingled at the will of the possessor. It has 
thus a twofold operation—the bodying forth 
of feelings, sentiments, and ideas, in beautiful 
and majestic forms, and giving to them local 
habitations; and the informing the colours 
and the shapes of matter with the properties 
of.the soul. The first of these workings of the 
faculty supplies the highest excellencies of the 
orator, and the philosophic bard. When 
Sophocles represents the eternal laws of 
morality as “produced in the pure regions of 
celestial air—having the Olympian alone for 
their parent—as not subject to be touched by 
the decays of man’s mortal nature, or to be 
shaded by oblivion—for the divinity ir mighty 





62 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


within them, and waxes not old it is this 
which half gives to them a majestic person¬ 
ality, and dimly figures out their attributes. 
By the same process, the imaginative faculty, 
aiming at results less sublime but more definite 
and complete, gave individual shape to loves, 
graces, and affections, and endowed them with 
the bread of life. By this process, it shades 
over the sorrows which it describes by the 
beauties and the graces of nature, and tinges 
with gentle colouring the very language of 
affliction. In the second mode of its operation, 
on the other hand, it moves over the universe 
like the spirit of God on the face of the waters, 
and peoples it with glorious shapes, as in the 
Greek mythology, or sheds on it a consecrating 
radiance, and imparts to it an intense sym¬ 
pathy, as in the poems of these more reflective 
days. Although a harmonizing faculty, it can 
by the law of its essence only act on things 
which have an inherent likeness. It brings 
out the secret affinities of its objects; but it 
cannot combine things which nature has not 
prepared for union, because it does not add, 
but transfuses. Hence there can be no wild 
incongruity, no splendid confusion in its works. 
Those which are commonly regarded as its 
productions in the metaphorical speeches of 
“ Irish eloquence,” are their very reverse, and 
may serve by contrast to explain its realities. 
The highest and purest of its efforts are when 
the intensest elements of the human soul are 
mingled inseparably with the vastest majesties 
of the universe; as where Lear identifies his 
age with that of the heavens, and calls on 
them to avenge his wrongs by their com¬ 
munity of lot; and where Timon “ fixes his 
everlasting mansion upon the beached shore 
of the salt flood,” that “once a day with its 
embossed froth the turbulent surge may cover 
him,” scorning human tears, but desiring the 
vast ocean for his eternal mourner ! 

Of this transfusing and reconciling faculty— 
whether its office be to “clothe upon,” or to 
spiritualize—Mr. Wordsworth is, in the highest 
degree, master. Of this, abundant proofs will 
be found in the latter portion of this article ; at 
present we will only give a few examples. 
The first of these is one of the grandest in¬ 
stances of noble daring, completely successful, 
which poetry exhibits. After a magnificent 
picture of a single yew-tree, and a fine allusion 
to its readiness to furnish spears for old battles, 
the poet proceeds: 

•-“Bufcworthier still of note 

Are those fraternal four of Borrowdale, 

Join’d in one solemn and capacious grove; 

Huge trunks !—and each particular trunk a growth 

Of intertwisted fibres serpentine, 

Upcoiling, and inveterately convolved,— 


* This passage—one of the noblest instances of the 
moral sublime—is from the Theban CEdipus, where it is 
uttered by the Chorus on some of the profane scoffs of 
the fated Iocasta: 

N ofioi 

' YxlnnoSeg y’ upaviav <T aidcp 
TsKVoidevrei, wv ’OXvpnog 
Tlarrjp povog, viv Gvara 
•Pvo-ts aucouv erixrev, mk 
itotz XaOa xaraxoipace i. 

Mryaff cv rsroig Seog, 

OvSs yypaaxsc. 


Not uninformed by fantasy and look 

That threaten the profane ; —a pillar'd shade 

Upon whose grassless floor of red-brown hue, 

By sheddings from the pining umbrage tinged 

Perennially—beneath whose sable roof 

Of boughs, as if fox festal purpose deck’d 

By unrejoicing berries, ghostly shapes 

May meet at noon-tide— Fear and trembling Hope , 

Silence and Foresight—Death the Skeleton 

And Time the Shadow —there to celebrate, 

As in a natural temple scatter’d o’er 
With altars undisturb’d of mossy stone, 

United worship; or in mute repose 
To lie, and listen to the mountain flood 
Murmuring from Glamarara’s inmost caves.” 

Let the reader, when that first glow of intui¬ 
tive admiration which this passage cannot fail 
to inspire is past, look back on the exquisite 
gradations by which it naturally proceeds from 
mere description to the sublime personification 
of the most awful abstractions, and the union 
of their fearful shapes in strange worship, or 
in listening to the deepest of nature’s voices. 
The first lines—interspersed indeed with epi¬ 
thets drawn from the operations of mind, and 
therefore giving to them an imaginative tinge 
—are, for the most part, a mere picture of the 
august brotherhood of trees, though their very 
sound is in more august accordance with their 
theme than most of the examples usually pro¬ 
duced of “echoes to the sense.” Having com¬ 
pletely set before us the image of the scene, 
the poet begins that enchantment by which it 
is to be converted into a fitting temple for the 
noontide spectres of Death and Time, by the 
general intimation that it is “not uninformed 
by fantasy and looks that threaten the pro¬ 
fane”—then, by the mere epithet pillared, gives 
us the more particular feeling of a fane—then, 
by reference to the actual circumstances of the 
grassless floor of red-brown hue, preserves to 
us the peculiar features of the scene which 
thus he is hallowing—and at last gives to the 
roof and its berries a strange air of unrejoic¬ 
ing festivity—until we are prepared for the 
introduction of the phantasms, and feel that 
the scene could be fitted to no less tremendous 
a conclave. The place, without losing one of 
its individual features, is decked for the recep¬ 
tion of these noon-tidte shades, and we are pre¬ 
pared to muse on them with unshrinking eyes. 
How by a less adventurous but not less de¬ 
lightful process, does the poet impart to an 
evening scene on the Thames, at Richmond, 
the serenity of his own heart, and tinge it with 
softest and saddest hues of the fancy and the 
affections ! The verses have all the richness 
of Collins, to whom they allude, and breathe a 
more profound and universal sentiment than 
is found in his sky-tinctured poetry. 

“How richly glows the water’s breast 
Before us tinged with evening hues, 

While, facing thus the crimson west, 

The boat her silent course pursues! 

And see how dark the backward stream ! 

A little moment past so smiling! 

And still perchance, with faithless gleam, 

Some other loiterer beguiling. 

“Such views the youthful bard allure; 

But, heedless of the following gloom, 

He deems their colours shall endure 
Till peace go with him to the tomb 





ON THE GENIUS AND WRITINGS OF WORDSWORTH. 


53 


And let him nurse his fond deceit, 

And what if he must die in sorrow! 

Who would not cherish dreams so sweet; 

Though grief and pain may come to-morrow 1 

“ Glide gently thus, for ever glide, 

O Thames ! that other hards may see 
As lovely visions by thy side 
As now, fair river! come to me. 

O glide, fair stream! for ever so, 

Thy quiet soul on all bestowing. 

Till all our minds for ever flow, 

As thy deep waters now are flowing. 

“Vain thought!—Yet be as now thou art, 

That in thy waters may be seen 
The image of a poet’s heart, 

How bright, how solemn, how serene !” 

The following delicious sonnet, inspired by 
the same scene, is one of the latest effusions 
of its author. We do not here quote it on ac¬ 
count of its allusion to one of the most de¬ 
lightful of poets—nor of the fine unbroken 
ligament by which the harmony listened to by 
the later bard is connected with that which the 
earlier drank in, by the lineage of the song¬ 
sters who keep tip the old ravishment—but of 
that imaginative power, by which a sacredness 
is imparted to the place and to the birds, as 
though they performed unresting worship in 
the most glorious of cathedrals. 

“ Fame tells of groves from England far away*— 
Groves that inspire the nightingale to trill 
And modulate, with subtle reach of skill 
Elsewhere unmatch’d, her ever-varying lay; 

Such bold report I venture to gainsay: 

For I have heard the choir of Richmond-hill 
Chanting’ with indefatigable bill; 

While I bethought me of a distant day; 

When haply under shade of that same wood, 

And scarcely conscious of the dashing oars 
Plied steadily between those willowy shores, 

The sweet-soul’d Poet of the Seasons stood— 
Listening, and listening long, in rapturous mood, 

Ye heavenly birds! to your progenitors.” 

The following “Thought of a Briton on the 
subjugation of Switzerland,” has an elemental 
grandeur imbued with the intensest sentiment, 
which places it among the highest efforts of 
the imaginative faculty. 

“ Two voices are there ; one is one of the sea. 

One of the mountains ; each a mighty voice : 

In both from age to age thou didst rejoice, 

They were thy chosen music, Liberty! 

There came a tyrant, and with holy glee 
Thou fought’st against him ; but hast vainly striven, 
Thou from thine Alpine holds at length are driven, 
Where not a torrent murmurs heard by thee. 

Of one deep bliss thine ear hath been bereft; 

Then cleave, O cleave, to that which still is left: 

For, high-soul’d maid, what sorrow would it be, 

That mountain-floods should thunder as before, 

And ocean bellow from his rocky shore, 

And neither awful voice be heard by thee !” 

We have thus feebly attempted to give some 
glimpse into the essence of Wordsworth’s 
powers—of his skill in delineating the forms 
of creation—of his insight into the spirit of 
man—and of his imaginative faculty. How 
he has applied these gifts to philosophical po¬ 
etry, and what are the results of his contem¬ 
plation, by their aid, on the external universe— 


human life—individual character—the vicis¬ 
situdes of individual fortune—society at large 
—and the prospects of the species—we shall 
next proceed more particularly to examine. 

The spirit of contemplation influences and 
directs all Wordsworth’s poetical faculties. 
He does not create a variety of individual 
forms to vivify them ivith the Promethean fire 
of dramatic genius, and exhibit the living 
struggle of their passions and their affections 
in opposition to each other, or to destiny. “The 
moving accident is not his trade.” He looks 
on humanity as from a more exalted sphere, 
though he feels his kindred with it while he 
gazes and yearns over it with deepest sympa¬ 
thy. No poet of ancient or modern times has 
dared so entirely to repose on the mere strength 
of his own powers. Others, indeed, have 
given hints of the divinest truths, even amidst 
their wildest and most passionate effusions. 
The tragedies of Sophocles, for example, 
abound in moralities expressed with a grace 
and precision which often ally the sentiment 
to an image and almost define it to the senses. 
In Shakspeare the wisdom is as much deeper 
as the passion is intenser; the minds of the 
characters, under the strongest excitements of 
love, hope, or agony, grow.bright as well as 
warm, and in their fervid career shed abroad 
sparkles of fire, which light up, for an instant, 
the inmost sanctuaries of our nature. But few 
have ventured to send into the world essen¬ 
tially meditative poems, which none but the 
thoughtful can truly enjoy. Lucertius is the 
only writer of antiquity who has left a great 
work of this description; and he has unhap¬ 
pily lavished the boundless riches of genius 
on doctrines which are in direct opposition to 
the spirit of poetry. An apostle of a more ge¬ 
nial faith, Wordsworth, stands pre-eminently— 
almost alone—a divine philosopher among the 
poets. It has been his singular lot, in this late 
age of the world, to draw little from those 
sources of interest which incident and situ¬ 
ation supply—and to rest his claim to the 
gratitude and admiration of the people on his 
majestical contemplations of man and the uni¬ 
verse. 

The philosophical poetry of Wordsworth is 
not more distinct from the dramatic, or the 
epic, than from the merely didactic and moral. 
He has thrown into it as much of profound 
affection, as much of ravishing loveliness, as 
much of delicate fantasy, as adorn the most 
romantic tales, or the most passionate trage* 
dies. If he sees all things “ far as angel’s 
ken,” he regards them with human love. His 
imagination is never obscured amidst his 
reasonings, but is ever active to imbody the 
beautiful and the pure, and to present to us 
the most august moralities in “clear dream 
and solemn vision.” Instead of reaching sub¬ 
lime conclusions by a painful and elaborate 
process, he discloses them by a single touch, 
he fixes them on our hearts for ever. So in¬ 
tense are his perceptions of moral beauty, 
that he feels the spirit of good however deeply 
hidden, and opens to our view the secret 
springs of love and of joy, where all has ap¬ 
peared barren to the ungifted observer. He 
can trace, prolong, and renew within us, those 

2 


* Wallacbia is the country alluded to. 






54 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


mysterious risings of delight in the soul which 
“may make a chrysome child to smile,” and 
which, when half-experienced at long intervals 
in riper age, are to us the assurances of a bet¬ 
ter life. He follows with the nice touch of un¬ 
erring sympathy all the most subtle workings 
of the spirit of good, as it makes its little 
sanctuaries in hearts unconscious of its pre¬ 
sence, and blends its influences unheeded with 
ordinary thoughts, hopes, and sorrows. The 
old prerogatives of humanity, which long 
usage has made appear common, put on their 
own air of grandeur while he teaches us to re¬ 
vere them. When we first read his poetry, 
we look on all the mysteries of our being with 
a new reverence, and feel like children who, 
having been brought up in some deserted 
palace, learn for the first time the regality of 
their home—understand a venerableness in 
the faded escutcheons with which they were 
accustomed to play—and feel the figures on 
the stained windows, or on the decaying tapes¬ 
try, which were only grotesque before speak¬ 
ing to their hearts in ancestral voices. 

The consecration which Wordsworth has 
shed over the external world is in a great 
measure peculiar to his genius. In the He¬ 
brew poetry there was no trace of particular 
description—but general images, such as of 
tall cedars, of green pastures, or of still wa¬ 
ters, were alone permitted to aid the affections 
of the devout worshipper. The feeling of the 
vast and indistinct prevailed; for all in reli¬ 
gion was symbolical and mysterious, and 
pointed to “temples not made with hands, eter¬ 
nal in the heavens.” In the exquisite master¬ 
pieces of Grecian inspiration, free nature’s 
grace was almost excluded by the opposite 
tendency to admire only the definite and the 
palpable. Hence, the pictures of nymphs, 
satyrs, and deities, were perpetually substi¬ 
tuted for views of the magnificence of earth 
and heaven. In the romantic poetry of modern 
times, the open face of nature has again been 
permitted to smile on us, and its freshness to 
glide into our souls. Nor has there been want¬ 
ing “craft of delicate spirits” to shed lovelier 
tinges of the imagination on all its scenes—to 
scatter among them classical images like Ionic 
temples among the fair glades and deep woods 
of some rich domain—to call dainty groups 
of fairies to hold their revellings upon the vel¬ 
vet turf—or afford glimpses of angel wings 
floating at eventide in the golden perspective. 
But the imagination of Wordsworth has given 
to the external universe a charm which has 
never else, extensively at least, been shed over 
it. He has not personified the glorious objects 
of Creation—nor peopled them with beautiful 
and majestic shapes—but, without depriving 
them of their own reality, has imparted to 
them a life which makes them objects of af¬ 
fection and reverence. He enables us at once 
to enjoy the contemplation of their colours and 
forms, and to love them as human friends. He 
consecrates earth by the mere influences of 
sentiment and thought, and renders its scenes 
as enchanted as though he had filled them 
with Oriental wonders. Touched by him, the 
hills, the rocks, the hedge-rows, and the hum- 
Uest flowers shine in a magic lustre, “which 


never was by sea or land,” and which yet is 
strangely familiar to our hearts. These are 
not hallowed by him with “angel visits,” nor 
by the presence of fair and immortal shapes, 
but by the remembrances of early joy, by 
lingering gleams of a brightness which has 
passed away, and dawnings of a glory to be 
revealed in the fulness of time. The lowliest 
of nature’s graces have power to move and to 
delight him. “The clouds are touched, and in 
their silent faces does he read unutterable 
love.” He listens'to the voice of the cuckoo 
in early spring, till he “begets again the 
golden time of his childhood,” and till the 
world, which is “ fit home” for that mysteri¬ 
ous bird, appears “an airy unsubstantial place.” 
At the root of some old thorn, or beneath the 
branches of some time-honoured tree, he opens 
the sources of delicious musing, and suggests 
the first hints which lead through a range of 
human thoughts to the glories of our final des- 
tiny. When we traverse with him the “bare 
earth and mountains bare,” we feel that “ the 
place whereon we are standing is holy ground;” 
the melancholy brook- can touch our souls as 
truly as a tragic catastrophe ; the splendours 
of the western sky give intimation of “a joy 
past joy;” and the meanest flowers, and scanty 
blades of grass, awaken within us hopes too 
rapturous for smiles, and “thoughts which do 
often lie too deep for tears.” 

To give all the instances of this sublime 
operation of the imaginative faculty in Words¬ 
worth, would be to quote the far larger portion 
of his works. A few lines, however, from the 
poem composed on the Banks of the Wye, 
will give our readers a deep glimpse into the 
inmost heart of his poetry, and of his poetical 
system, on the communion of the soul of man 
with the spirit of the universe. In this raptur¬ 
ous effusion—in which, with a wise prodi¬ 
gality, he hints and intimates the profoundest 
of those feelings which vivify all he has cre¬ 
ated—he gives the following view of the pro¬ 
gress of his sympathy with the external 
world:— 

-“Nature then 

(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days 
And their glad animal movements, all gone by) 

To me was all in all—I cannot paint 
What then I was. The sounding cataract 
Haunted me like a passion : the tall rock, 

The mountain, and the deep and gloomy wood, 
Their colours and their forms, were then to me 
An appetite : a feeling and a love, 

That had no need of a remoter charm 
By thought supplied, or any interest 
Unborrow’d from the eye. That time is past, 

And all its aching joys are now no more, 

And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this 
Faint I, nor mourn, nor murmur; other gifts 
Have follow’d, for such loss I would believe 
Abundant recompense. For I have learn’d 
To look on nature, not as in the hour 
Of thoughtless youth, but hearing oftentimes 
The still sad music of humanity. 

Not harsh, nor grating, though of ample power 
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt 
A spirit which disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime 
Of something far more deeply interfused, 

Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, 

And the round ocean, and the living air, 





ON THE GENIUS AND WRITINGS OF WORDSWORTH. 


And the blue sky, and in the mind of mind: 

A motion and a spirit, that impels 

All thinking things, all objects of all thought, 

And rolls through all things.” 

There are none of the workings of our 
poet s imaginative faculty more wonderful 
in themselves, or more productive of high 
thoughts and intense sympathies, than those 
"which have for their objects the grand ab¬ 
stractions of humanity—Life and Death, Child¬ 
hood and Old Age. Every period of our being 
is to him not only filled with its own peculiar 
endearments and joys, but dignified by its own 
sanctities. The common forms of life assume 
a new venerableness when he touches them— 
for he makes us feel them in their connection 
with our immortality—even as the uncouth 
vessels of the Jewish law appeared sublime to 
those who felt that they were dedicated to the 
immediate service of Heaven. He ever leaves 
us conscious that the existence on whose be¬ 
ginning he expatiates, will endure for ever. 
He traces out those of its fibres which are 
eternal in their essence. He discovers in 
every part of our earthly course manifold 
intimations that these our human hearts will 
never die. Childhood is, to him, not only the 
season of novelty, of innocence, of joyous 
spirits, and of mounting hope—but of a dream¬ 
like glory which assures to us that this world 
is not our final home. Age to him, is not a 
descent into a dark valley, but a “final emi¬ 
nence,” where the wise may sit “in awful 
sovereignty” as on a high peak among the 
mountains in placid summer, and commune 
with Heaven, undisturbed by the lesser noises 
of the tumultuous world. One season of life 
is bound to another by “ the natural piety” 
which the unchanging forms of nature pre¬ 
serve, and death comes at last over the deep 
and tranquil stream as it is about to emerge 
into a lovelier sunshine, as “ a shadow thrown 
softly and lightly from a passing cloud.” 

The Ode in which Wordsworth particularly 
developes the intimations of immortality to be 
found in the recollections of early childhood, 
is, to our feelings, the noblest piece of lyric 
poetry in the world. It was the first poem of 
its author which we read, and never shall we 
forget the sensations which it excited within 
us. We had heard the cold sneers attached 
to his name—we had glanced over criticisms, 
“ lighter than vanity,” which represented him 
as an object for scorn “ to point its slow un¬ 
moving finger at”—and here—in the works 
of this derided poet—we found a new vein of 
imaginative sentiment opened to us—sacred 
recollections brought back on our hearts with 
all the freshness of novelty, and all the vene¬ 
rableness of far-off time—the most mysterious 
of old sensations traced to a celestial origin— 
and the shadows cast over the opening of life 
from the realities of eternity renewed before 
us with a sense of their supernal causes! 
What a gift did we then inherit! To have 
the best and most imperishable of intellectual 
treasures—the mighty world of reminiscences 
of the days of infancy—set before us in a new 
and holier light; to find objects of deepest 
veneration where we had only been accustom¬ 
ed to love; to feel in all the touching mysteries 


of our past being the symbols and assurances 
of our immortal destiny! The poet has here 
spanned our mortal life as with a glorious 
rainbow, terminating on one side in infancy, 
and on the other in the realms of blessedness 
beyond the grave, and shedding even upon 
the middle of that course tints of unearthly 
colouring. The following is the view he has 
given of the fading glory of childhood—drawn 
in part from Oriental fiction, but imbodying 
the profoundest of elemental truths:— 

“Our birth is but a sleep, and a forgetting: 

The soul that rises with us, our life’s star, 

Hath elsewhere known its setting, 

And cometh from afar; 

Not in entire forgetfulness, 

And not in utter nakedness, 

But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
From God that is our home; 

Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! 

Shades of the prison-house begin to close 
Upon the growing Boy, 

But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, 

He sees it in his joy ; 

The Youth that daily farther from the east 
Must travel still is Nature’s priest, 

And by the vision splendid 
Is on his way attended; 

At length the man perceives it die away. 

And fade into the light of common day!” 

But the following is the noblest passage of 
the whole ; and such an outpouring of thought 
and feeling—such a piece of inspired philoso¬ 
phy—we do not believe exists elsewhere in 
human language:— 

“ O joy! that in our embers 
Is something that doth live, 

That nature yet remembers 
What was fugitive! 

The thought of our past years in me doth breed 

Perpetual benedictions : not indeed 

For that w hich is most worthy to be blest; 

Delight and liberty, the simple creed 
Of Childhood, whether fluttering or at rest, 

With new-born hope for ever in his breast:— 

Not for these I raise 
The song of thanks and praise; 

But for those obstinate questionings 
Of sense and outward things, 

Fallings from us, vanishings ; 

Blank misgivings of a Creature 
Moving about in worlds not realiz’d. 

High instincts, before which our mortal Nature 
Did tremble like a guilty Thing surprised ; 

But for those first affections, 

Those shadowy recollections, 

Which, be they what they may, 

Are yet the fountain light of all our day. 

Are yet a master light of all our seeing; 

Uphold us, cherish us, and make 
Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake, 

To perish never; 

Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour, 

Nor Man nor Boy, 

Nor all that is at enmity with joy, 

Can utterly abolish or destroy ! 

Hence, in a season of calm weather. 

Though inland far we be, 

Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea 
Which brought us hither, 

Can in a moment travel thither, 

And see the Children sport upon the shore, 

And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.’ 

After this rapturous flight, the author thus 
leaves to repose on the quiet lap of humanity. 






56 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


and soothes us with a strain of such mingled 
solemnity and tenderness, as “might make 
angels weep 

“Wliat though the radiance which was once so bright, 

Be now for ever taken from my sight, 

Though nothing can bring back the hour 
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower; 

We will grieve not, rather find 
Strength in w'hat remains behind, 

In the primal sympathy 

Which having been, must ever be. 

In the soothing thoughts that spring 
Out of human suffering, 

In the faith that looks through death, 

In years that bring the philosophic mind. 

And oh ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and Groves, 
Think not of any severing of our loves! 

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might; 

I only have relinquish’d one delight 
To live beneath your more habitual sway. 

I love the Brooks which down their channels fret, 

Even more than when I tripp’d lightly as they ; 

The innocent brightness of a new-born Day 
Is lovely yet; 

The Clouds that gather round the setting sun 
Do take a sober colouring from an eye 
That hath kept watch o’er man’s mortality ; 

Another race hath been, and other palms are won. 
Thanks to the human heart by which we live, 

Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, 

To me the meanest flower that blows can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.” 

The genius of the poet, which thus dignifies 
and consecrates the abstractions of our nature, 
is scarcely less felicitous in its pictures of 
society at large, and in its philosophical de¬ 
lineations of the characters and fortunes of 
individual man. Seen through the holy me¬ 
dium of his imagination, all things appear 
“ bright and solemn and serene”—the asperi¬ 
ties of our earthly condition are softened away 
—and the most gentle and evanescent of its 
hues gleam and tremble over it. He delights 
to trace out those ties of sympathy by which 
the meanest of beings are connected with the 
general heart. He touches the delicate strings 
by which the great family of man are bound 
together, and thence draws forth sounds of 
choicest music. He makes us partake of 
those joys which are “ spread through the 
earth to be caught in stray gifts by whoever 
will find” them—discloses the hidden wealth 
of the soul—finds beauty everywhere, and 
“ good in every thing.” He draws character 
with the softest pencil, and shades it with the 
pensive tints of gentlest thought. The pas¬ 
toral of The Brothers—the story of Michael— 
and the histories in the Excursion which the 
priest gives while standing among the rustic 
graves of the church-yard, among the moun¬ 
tains, are full of exquisite portraits, touched 
and softened by a divine imagination which 
human love inspires. He rejoices also to ex¬ 
hibit that holy process by which the influ¬ 
ences of creation are shed abroad in the heart, 
to excite, to mould, or to soften. We select 
the following stanzas from many passages of 
this kind of equal beauty, because in the 
fantasy of nature’s making “ a lady of her 
own,” the object of the poet is necessarily 
developed with more singleness than where 
reference is incidentally made to the effect 
of scenery on the mind:— 


“ Three years she grew in sun and shower, 

Then Nature said, a lovelier flower 
On earth was never sown ; 

This child I to myself will take, 

She shall be mine, and I will make 
A lady of my own! 

Myself will to the darling be — 

Both law and impulse : and with me 
The girl, in rock and plain, 

In earth and heaven, in glade and bower, 

Shall feel an overseeing power, 

To kindle or restrain. 

She shall be sportive as the fawn, 

That wild with glee across the lawn 
Or up the mountain springs ; 

And her’s shall be the breathing balm, 

And hcr’s the silence and the calm 
Of mute insensate things. 

The floating clouds their state shall lend 
To her; for her the willow bend; 

Nor shall she fail to see 
Even in the motions of the storm 
Grace that shall mould the maiden’s form 
By silent sympathy. 

The stars of midnight shall be dear 
To her ; and she shall lean on air 
In many a secret place 
Where rivulets dance their wayward round, 

And beauty, born of murmuring sound, 

Shall pass into her face !” 

• 

But we must break off to give a passage in 
a bolder and most passionate strain, which 
represents the effect of the tropical grandeur 
and voluptuousness of nature on a wild and 
fiery spirit—at once aAvakening and half-re¬ 
deeming its irregular desires. It is from the 
poem of “Ruth,”—a piece where the most 
profound of human affections is disclosed 
amidst the richest imagery, and incidents of 
wild romance are told with a Grecian purity 
of expression. The impulses of a beautifu* 
and daring } r outh are thus represented as in 
spired by Indian scenery: 

“ The wind, the tempest roaring high, 

The tumult of a tropic sky, 

Might well be dangerous food, 

For him, a youth to whom was given 
So much of earth, so much of heaven, 

And such impetuous blood. 

Whatever in those climes he found 
Irregular in sight or sound, 

Did to his mind impart 
A kindred impulse, seem’d allied 
To his own powers, and justified 
The workings of his heart. 

Nor less to feed voluptuous thought, 

The beauteous forms of Nature wrought 
Fair trees and lovely flowers; 

The breezes their own languor lent; 

The stars had feelings which they sent 
Into those gorgeous bowers. 

Yet in his tvorst pursuits, I ween 
That sometimes there did intervene 
Pure hopes of high intent; 

For passions link’d to forms as fair 
And stately, needs must have their share 
Of noble sentiment.” 

We can do little more than enumerate those 
pieces of narrative and character, w r hich we 
esteem the best in their kind of our author’s 
works. The old Cumberland Beggar is one 




ON THE GENIUS AND WRITINGS OF WORDSWORTH. 


57 


of those which linger most tenderly on our 
memories. The poet here takes almost the 
lowliest of his species—an aged mendicant, 
one of the last of that class who made regular 
circuits amidst the cottages of the north—and 
after a vivid picture of his frame bent with 
years, of his slow motion and decayed senses, 
he asserts them not divorced from good— 
traces out the links which bind him to his 
fellows—and shows the benefit which even 
he can diffuse in his rounds, while he serves 
as a record to bind together past deeds and 
offices of charity—compels to acts of love by 
“ the mild necessity of use” those whose 
hearts would otherwise harden—gives to the 
young “ the first mild touch of sympathy and 
thought, in which they find their kindred with 
a world where want and sorrow are”—and 
enables even the poor to taste the joy of be¬ 
stowing. This last blessing is thus set forth 
and illustrated by a precious example of self- 
denying goodness and cheerful hope, which 
is at once more tear-moving and more sublime 
than the finest things in Cowper:— 

-“ Man is dear to man ; the poorest poor 

Long for some moments in a weary life 
When they can know and feel that they have been, 
Themselves, the fathers and the dealers out 
Of some small blessings ; have been kind to such 
As needed kindness, for this single cause, 

That we have all of us one human heart. 

—Such pleasure is to one kind being known, 

My neighbour, when with punctual care, each week 
Duly as Friday comes, though prest herself 
With her own wants, she from her chest of meal 
Takes one unsparing handful for the scrip 
Of this old mendicant, and, from her door 
Returning with invigorated heart, 

Sits by her fire, and builds her hope in Heaven.” 

Then, in the Excursion, there is the story of 
the Ruined Cottage, with its admirable grada¬ 
tions, more painful than the pathetic narratives 
of its author usually are, yet not without re¬ 
deeming traits of sweetness, and a reconciling 
spirit which takes away its sting. There, too, 
is the intense history of the Solitary’s sorrows 
—there the story of the Hanoverian and the 
Jacobite, who learned to snatch a sympathy 
from their bitter disputings, grew old in con¬ 
troversy and in friendship, and were buried 
side by side—there the picture of Oswald, the 
gifted and generous and graceful hero of the 
mountain solitude, who was cut off in the 
blossom of his youth—there the record of that 
pleasurable sage, whose house Death, after 
forty years of forbearance, visited with throng¬ 
ing summonses, and took off his family one 
after the other, “ with intervals of peace,” till 
he too, with cheerful thoughts about him, was 
“ overcome by unexpected sleep in one blest 
moment,” and as he lay on the “ warm lap of 
his mother earth,” “ gathered to his fathers.” 
There are those fine vestiges, and yet finer 
traditions and conjectures, of the good knight 
Sir Alfred Irthing, the “ mild-hearted cham¬ 
pion” who had retired in Elizabeth’s days to 
a retreat among the hills, and had drawn 
around him a kindred and a family. Of him 
nothing remained but a gentle fame in the 
hearts of the villagers, an uncouth monumental 
stone grafted on the church-walls, which the 

8 


sagest antiquarian might muse over in vain, 
and his name engraven in a wreath or posy 
around three bells with which he had endowed 
the spire. “So,” exclaims the poet, in strains 
as touching and majestic as ever were breathed 
over the transitory grandeur of earth— 

“ So fails, so languishes, grows diin and dies, 

All that this world is proud of. From their spheres 
The stars of human glory are cast down ; 

Perish the roses, and the flowers of kings, 

Princes and emperors, and the crowns and palms 
Of all the mighty, withered, and consumed.” 

In the Excursion, too, is the exquisite tale 
of poor Ellen—a seduced and forsaken girl— 
from which we will give one affecting inci¬ 
dent, scarcely to be matched, for truth and 
beauty, through the many sentimental poems 
and tales which have been founded on a simi¬ 
lar wo : 

“—Beside the cottage in which Ellen dwelt 
Stands a tall ash tree ; to whose topmost twig 
A thrush resorts, and annually chants. 

At morn and evening from that naked perch, 

While all the undergrove is thick with leaves, 

A time-beguiling ditty, for delight 
Of his fond partner, silent in the nest. 

—* Ay why,’ said Ellen, sighing to herself, 

‘ Why do not words, and kiss, and solemn pledge; 
And nature that is kind in Woman’s breast, 

And reason that in Man is wise and good, 

And fear of Him who is a righteous Judge,— 

Why do not these prevail for human life, 

To keep two hearts together, that began 
Their spring-time with one love, and that have need 
Of mutual pity and forgiveness, sweet 
To grant, or be received, while that poor bird, 

—O come and hear him! Thou who hast to me 
Been faithless, hear him, though a lowly creature, 
One of God’s simple children that yet know not 
The universal Parent, how he sings 
As if he Wished the firmament of Heaven 
Should listen, and give back to him the voice 
Of his triumphant constancy and love; 

The proclamation that he makes, how far 
Ilis darkness doth transcend our fickle light!’ 

“ Such was the tender passage, not by me 
Repeated without loss of simple phrase, 

Which I perused, even as the words had been 
Committed by forsaken Ellen’s hand 
To the blank margin of a Valentine, 

Bedropped with tears.” 

With these tear-moving expressions of ill- 
fated love, we may contrast the following rich 
picture of the affection in its early bloom, from 
the tale of Vandracour and Julia, which will 
show how delightedly the poet might have lin¬ 
gered in the luxuries of amatory song, had he 
not chosen rather to brood over the whole 
world of sentiment and passion :— 

“Arabian fiction never filled the world 
With half the wonders that were wrought for him. 
Earth breathed in one great presence of the spring; 
Life turned the meanest of her implements 
Before his eyes to price above all gold ; 

The house she dwelt in was a sainted shrine; 

Her chamber window did surpass in glory 
The portal of the dawn ; all paradise 
Could, by the simple opening of a door, 

Let itself in upon him ; pathways, walks, 

Swarmed with enchantment, till his spirit sanlt, 
Surcharged, within him, overblest to move 
Beneath a sun that walks a weary world 
To its dull round of ordinary cares; 

A man too happy for mortality.” 






58 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


Perhaps the highest instance of Words¬ 
worth’s imaginative faculty, exerted in a tale 
of human fortunes, is to be found in “The 
White Doe of Rylstone.” He has here suc¬ 
ceeded in two distinct efforts, the results of 
which are yet in entire harmony. He has 
shown the gentle spirit of a high-born maiden 
gathering strength and purity from sorrow, 
and finally, after the destruction of her family, 
and amidst the ruin of her paternal domains, 
consecrated by suffering. He has also here, 
by the introduction of that lovely wonder, the 
favourite doe of his heroine, at once linked 
the period of his narrative to that of its events, 
and softened down the saddest catastrophe and 
the most exquisite of mortal agonies. A gal¬ 
lant chieftain, one of the goodliest pillars of 
the olden time, falls, with eight of his sons, 
in a hopeless contest for the religion to which 
they were devoted—the ninth, who followed 
them unarmed, is slain while he strives to 
bear away, for their sake, the banner which 
he had abjured—the sole survivor, a helpless 
woman, is left to wander desolate about the 
silent halls and tangled glades, once witnesses 
of her joyous infancy—and yet all this variety 
of grief is rendered mild and soothing by the 
influences of the imagination of the poet. The 
doe, which first with its quiet sympathy excited 
relieving tears in its forsaken mistress, which 
followed her, a gentle companion, through all 
her mortal wanderings, and which years after 
made Sabbath visits to her grave, is, like the 
spirit of nature, personified to heal, to bless, 
and to elevate. All who have read the poem 
aright, will feel prepared for that apotheosis 
which the poet has reserved for this radiant 
being, and will recognise the imaginative truth 
of that bold figure, by which the decaying 
towers of Bolton are made to smile upon its 
form, and to attest its unearthly relations :— 

“ There doth the gentle creature lie 
With these adversities unmoved; 

Calm spectacle, by earth and sky 
In their benignity approved ! 

And ay, methinks, this hoary pile, 

Subdued by outrage and decay, 

Looks down upon her with a smile, 

A gracious smile, that seems to say, 

‘ Thou art not a Child of Time, 

But daughter of the eternal Prime !’ ” 

Although Wordsworth chiefly delights in 
these humanities of poetry, ho has shown that 
he possesses feelings to appreciate and power 
to grasp the noblest of classic fictions. No 
one can read his Dion, his Loadamia, and the 
most majestic of his sonnets, without perceiv¬ 
ing that he has power to endow the stateliest 
shapes of old mythology with new life, and to 
diffuse about them a new glory. Hear him, 
for example, breaking forth, with holy disdain 
of the worldly spirit of the time, into this 
sublime apostrophy:— 

“ Great God ! I’d rather be 
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn : 

So might I, standing on some pleasant lee, 

Have glimpses which might make me less forlorn ; 

Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea, 

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn!” 

But he has chosen rather to survey the ma¬ 
jesties of Greece, with the eye of a philoso¬ 


pher as well as of a poet. He reviews them 
with emotions equally remote from pedantry 
and from intolerance—regarding not only the 
grace and the loveliness of their forms, but 
their symbolical meaning—tracing them to 
their elements in the human soul, and bringing 
before us the eldest wisdom which was im- 
bodied in their shapes, and speedily forgotten 
by their worshippers. Thus, among “ the pal¬ 
pable array of sense,” does he discover hints 
of immortal life—thus does he transport us 
back more than twenty centuries—and enable 
us to enter into the most mysterious and far- 
reaching hopes of a Grecian votary:— 

“•-A Spirit hung, 

Beautiful region! o’er thy Towns and Farms, 

Statues, and Temples, and memorial Tombs; 

And emanations were perceived, and acts 
Of immortality, in Nature’s course, 

Exemplified by mysteries, that were felt 
As bonds, on grave Philosopher imposed 
And armed Warrior ; and jn every grove, 

A gay or pensive tenderness prevail’d 
When piety more awful had relaxed. 

‘ Take, running River, take these locks of mine,* 

Thus would the votary say,—‘ this sever’d hair, 

My vow fulfilling, do I here present, 

Thankful for my beloved child’s return. 

Thy banks, Cephisus, he again hath trod, 

Thy murmurs heard ; and drunk the crystal lymph 
With which thou dost refresh the thirsty lip, 

And moisten all day long these flowery fields.’ 

And doubtless, sometimes, when the hair was shed 

Upon the flowing stream, a thought arose 

Of life continuous, Being unimpair’d 

That hath been, is, and where it was and is 

There shall be,—seen, and heard, and felt, and known, 

And recognised,—existence unexposed 

To the blind walk of mortal accident; 

From diminution free, and weakening age. 

While man grows old, and dwindles and decays; 

And countless generations of mankind 
Depart: and leave no vestige where they trod.” 

We must now bring this long article to a 
close—and yet how small a portion of our au¬ 
thor’s beauties have we even hinted! We 
have passed over the clear majesty of the 
poem of “ Hart Leap Well”—the lyrical gran¬ 
deur of the Feast of Brougham Castle—the 
masculine energy and delicate grace of the 
Sonnets which, with the exception perhaps of 
one or two of Warton and of Milton, far exceed 
all others in our language—“ The Wagoner,” 
that fine and hearty concession of a water- 
drinker to the joys of wine and the light-heart¬ 
ed folly which it inspires—and numbers of 
smaller poems and ballads, which to the super¬ 
ficial observer may seem only like woodland 
springs, but in which he who ponders intently 
will discern the breakings forth of an under¬ 
current of thought and feeling which is silently 
flowing beneath him. We trust, however, we 
have written or rather quoted enough to induce 
such of our readers as hitherto have despised 
the poet on the faith of base or ignorant criti¬ 
cism to read him for themselves, especially as 
by the recent appearance of the Excursion in 
octavo, and the arrangement of the minor 
poems in four small volumes, the whole of his 
poetical works are placed within their reach. 
If he has little popularity with the multitude, 
he is rewarded by the intense veneration and 
love of the finest spirits of the age. Not only 




NORTH’S LIFE OF LORD GUILFORD. 


59 


Coleridge, Lloyd, Southey, Wilson, and Lamb 1 
—with whom his name has been usually con¬ 
nected—but almost all the living poets have 
paid eloquent homage to his genius. He is 
loved by Montgomery, Cornwall, and Rogers— 
revered by the author of Waverley—ridiculed 
and pillaged by Lord Byron! Jeffrey, if he 
begins an article on his greatest work with 
the pithy sentence “this will never do” glows 
even while he criticises, and before he closes, 
though he came like Balaam to curse, like him 
“blesses altogether.” Innumerable essays, 
sermons, speeches, poems—even of those who 
profess to despise him—are tinged by his 
fancy and adorned by his expressions. And 
there are no small number of young hearts, 
which have not only been enriched butrenovat- 
ed by his poetry—which he has expanded, puri¬ 
fied, and exalted—and to which he has given 
the means of high communion with the good 
and the pure throughout the universe. These, 
equal at least in number to the original lovers 
of Shakspeare or of Milton, will transmit his 
fame to kindred spirits, and whether it shall 
receive or be denied the honour of fashion, it 
will ever be cherished by the purest of earthly 
minds, and connected with the most majestic 
of nature’s scenery. 

Too many of our living poets have seemed 
to take pride in building their fame on the 
sands. They have chosen for their subjects 
the disease of the heart—the sad anomalies 
of humanity—the turbulent and guilty pas¬ 
sions which are but for a season. Their re¬ 
nown, therefore, must necessarily decline as 
the species advances. Instead of tracing out 
the lineaments of the image of God indelibly 
impressed on the soul, they have painted the 
deformities which may obscure them for 


awhile, but can never utterly destroy them. 
Vice, which is the accident of our nature, has 
been their tl'enie instead of those affections 
which are its groundwork and essence. “Yet 
a little space, and that which men call evil is 
no more !” Yet a little space, and those wild 
emotions—those horrid deeds—those strange 
aberrations of the soul—on which some gifted 
bards have delighted to dwell, will fade away 
like the phantoms of a feverish dream. Then 
will poetry, like that of Wordsworth, which 
even now is the harbinger of a serener day, 
be felt and loved and held in undying honour. 
The genius of a poet who has chosen this high 
and pure career, too, will proceed in every 
stage of being, seeing that “it is a thing im¬ 
mortal as himself,” and that it was ever in¬ 
spired by affections which cannot die. The 
poet even in brighter worlds will feel, with in¬ 
conceivable delight, the connection between 
his earthly and celestial being—live along 
the golden lines of sentiment and thought back 
to the most delicious moments of his con¬ 
templations here—and rejoice in the recogni¬ 
tion of those joys of which he had tastes and 
intimations on earth. Then shall he see the 
inmost soul of his poetry disclosed—grasp as 
assured realities the gorgeous visions of his 
infancy—feel “ the burden of the mystery of 
all this unimaginable world,” which were 
lightened to him here, dissolved away—see 
the prophetic workings of his imagination 
realized—exult while “pain and anguish and 
the wormy grave,” which here were to him 
“ shapes of a dream,” are utterly banished 
from the view—and listen to the full chorus 
of that universal harmony whose first notes he 
here delighted to awaken! 


REVIEW OF “NORTH’S LIFE OF LORD GUILFORD.” 

[Retrospective Review.] 


This old piece of legal biography, which has 
been lately republished, is one of the most de¬ 
lightful books in the world. Its charm does 
not consist in any marvellous incidents of 
Lord Guilford’s life, or any peculiar interest 
attaching to his character, but in the un¬ 
equalled naivete of the writer—in the singular 
felicity with which he has thrown himself into 
his subject—and his vivid delineations of all 
the great lawyers of his time. He was a 
younger brother of the Lord Keeper, to whose 
affection he was largely indebted, and from 
whom he appears to have been scarcely ever 
divided. His work, in nice minuteness of de¬ 
tail, and living picture of motive, almost 
equals the auto-biographies of Benevento 
Cellini, Rousseau, and Cibber. He seems to 
be almost as intensely conscious of all his 
brother’s actions, and the movements of his 
mind, as they were of their own. All his 


ideas of human greatness and excellence 
appear taken from the man whom he cele¬ 
brates. There never was a more liberal or 
gentle prostration of the spirit. He was evi¬ 
dently the most humane, the most kindly, and 
the most single-hearted, of flatterers. There 
is a beauty in his very cringing, beyond the 
independence of many. It is the most gentle¬ 
man-like submission, the most graceful resig¬ 
nation of self of which we have ever read. 
Hence, there is nothing of the vanity of au¬ 
thorship—no attempt to display his own 
powers—throughout the work. He never 
comes forward in the first person, except as a 
witness. Indeed, he usually speaks of him¬ 
self as of another, as though he had half lost 
his personal consciousness in the contempla¬ 
tion of his idol’s virtues. The following pas 
sage, towards the conclusion, where he re¬ 
counts the favours of Lord Guilford to a 







GO 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


ounger brother, and at last, in the fulness of 
is heart, discloses, by a little quotation, that 
he is speaking of himself—this breaking from 
his usual modest narration into the only per¬ 
sonal feeling he seems to have cherished—is 
beautifully characteristic of the spirit which 
he brought to his work. 

“ But I ought to come nearer home, and take 
an account of his benevolences to his paternal 
relations. His youngest brother (the honoura¬ 
ble Roger North) was designed, by his father, 
for the civil law, as they call that professed at 
Doctors’ Commons, upon a specious fancy to 
have a son of each faculty or employ used in 
England. But his lordship dissuaded him, and 
advised rather to have him put to the common 
law; for the other profession provided but for 
a few, and those not wonderful well; whereas, 
the common law was more certain, and, in 
that way, he himself might bring him forwards, 
and assist him. And so it was determined. 
His lordshi-p procured for him a petit chamber, 
which cost his father £60, and there he was 
settled with a very scanty allowance ; to which 
his lordship made a timely addition of his own 
money: more than all this, he took him almost 
constantly out with him to company and enter¬ 
tainments, and always paid his scot; and, 
wiien he was attorney general, let him into 
partnership in one of the offices under him; 
and when his lordship was treasurer, and his 
brother called to the bar, a perquisite chamber, 
worth £150, fell; and that he gave to his 
brother for a practising chamber, and took in 
lieu only that which he had used for his studies. 
When his lordship was chief justice, he gave 
him the countenance of practising under him, 
at nisi prius ; and all the while his lordship 
was a house-keeper, his brother and servant 
were of his family at all meals. When the 
Temple was burnt, he fitted up a little room 
and study in his chambers in Serjeant’s Inn, 
for his brother to manage his small affairs of 
law in, and lodged him in his house till the 
Temple was built, and he might securely lodge 
there. And his lordship was pleased with a 
back door in his own study, by which he could 
go in and out to his brother, to discourse of 
incidents ; which way of life delighted his lord- 
ship exceedingly. And, what was more extra¬ 
ordinary, he went with his lordship in his 
coach constantly, to, and from, the courts of 
nisi prius, at Guildhall and Westminster. And, 
after his lordship had the great seal, his bro¬ 
ther’s practice (being then made of the king’s 
counsel, and coming within the bar) increased 
exceedingly, and, in about three years’ time he 
acquired the better part he afterwards was 
possessed of. At that time, his lordship took 
his brother into his family, and a coach and 
servants assigned him out of his equipages; 
and all at rack and manger, requiring only 
£200 a year; which was a trifle, as the -world 
went then. And it may truly be said, that this 
brother was a shadow to him, as if they had 
grown together. And, to show his lordship’s 
tenderness, I add this instance of fact. Once 
he seemed more than ordinarily disposed to 
pensiveness, even to a degree of melancholy. 
His lordship never left pumping, till he found 
out the cause of it; and that was a reflection 


what should become of him, if he should lose 
this good brother, and be left alone to himself: 
the thought of which he could scarce bear; 
for he had no opinion of his own strength, to 
work his way through the world with tolerable 
success. Upon this his lordship, to set his 
brother’s mind at ease, sold him an annuity of 
£200 a year, at an easy rate, upon condition 
to re-purchase it, at the same rate, when he 
was worth £5000. And this w r as all done ac¬ 
cordingly. 

11 0 et presidium et dtilce decus meum,” 

We will now conduct our readers through 
Lord Guilford’s life—introducing as many of 
the nice peculiarities of his historian as our 
limits will allow—and will then give them one 
or two of the portraits with which the work is 
enriched—and add a word on the changes 
which have taken place in the legal profession, 
since the time when the originals “ held the 
noisy tenour of their way” through its grada¬ 
tions. 

The Hon. Francis North, afterwards Baron 
Guilford, was the third son of Dudley, Lord 
North, Baron of Kirtling, who deserved the 
filial duty of his children, by the veneration 
which he manifested towards his own father, 
beyond even the strictness of those times; 
for, though he was an old man before his 
father died, he never sat or was covered in his 
presence unbidden. He sent his son, at an 
early age, to school, but was not very fortunate 
in his selection, for the master was a rigid 
Presbyterian, and his wife a furious Independ¬ 
ent, who used “ to instruct her babes in the 
gift of praying by the spirit, making them 
kneel by a bedside and pray;” but as “this 
petit spark was too small for that posture, he 
was set upon the bed to kneel with his face to 
the pillow.” This absurd treatment seems to 
have given the child an early disgust for those 
who were esteemed the fanatics, which never 
left him. He finished his scholastic education 
under a “ cavalier master,” with credit. After 
he left school, he became a fellow-commoner 
of St. John’s College, Cambridge, where he 
improved greatly in solid learning, and acquired 
a knowledge of music, which he afterwards 
used as a frequent solace amidst the toils of 
his profession. 

He next became a member of the Middle 
Temple, and occupied “a moiety of a petit 
chamber, which his father bought for him.” 
Here he “used constantly commons in the 
hall at noons and nights,” studied closely, 
and derived much benefit from the practice of 
putting cases, which was followed in the old 
temple cloisters by the students, and for the 
convenience of which they were rebuilt by 
Sir Christopher Wren in their present form. 
He, also, diligently common-placed the sub¬ 
stance of his reading, having acquired a very 
small but legible hand—“for,” as his biogra¬ 
pher observes, “ where contracting is the main 
business, it is not well to write, as the fashion 
then was, uncial or semi-uncial letters to look 
like pig’s ribs.” In his studies, he was wont 
by turns to read the reports and institutes; 
“ as, after a fulness of the reports in a morning, 
about noon, to take a repast in Stamford, 





01 


NORTH’S LIFE OF LORD GUILFORD. 


Crompton, or the Lord Coke’s Pleas of the 
Crown, and Jurisdiction of Courts, Manwood 
ot the Forest Law, and Fitzherbert’s Natura 
Brevium.” He, also, “despatched the greatest 
part” of the year-books, beginning with the 
book termed Henry the Seventh, from whence 
he regarded the common law derived “ as from 
a copious fountain.” While thus engaged, he 
did not altogether refuse recreation, but de¬ 
lighted in a small supper and a temperate 
glass with his friends in chambers, sometimes 
iancied “ to go about town and see trade-work, 
which is a very diverting and instructive en¬ 
tertainment,” and visited every thing extraor¬ 
dinary in town, “as engines, shows, lectures, 
and even so low as to hear Hugh Peters 
preach !” The only obstacle to his legal suc¬ 
cess was his excessive bashfulness, which so 
oppressed him, that when he dined or supped 
in the hall of the Middle Temple, he would 
not walk in alone, but “ used to stand dogging 
at the skreen till other company came, behind 
whom he might enter.” 

At the bar, he derived great advantage from 
the favour of Sir Jeofry Palmer, the attorney- 
general, who gave him many opportunities of 
showing his dexterity and knowledge of law, 
by procuring him to perform some of his own 
public duties, when he was himself disabled 
by sickness. Through the good offices of this 
zealous friend, Mr. North was appointed to 
argue for the king in the House of Lords, on 
the writ of error in the famous case of the 
King v. Hollis and others, which was brought, 
by order of the House of Commons, to reverse 
a judgment obtained in the time of Charles 
the First, against five of their members, who 
had been prosecuted for holding down the 
speaker in his chair, and other riotous pro¬ 
ceedings. In consequence of the ability which 
he displayed on this occasion, though the com¬ 
mons succeeded, he was, on the recommenda¬ 
tion of the Duke of York, appointed one of 
his majesty’s counsel. Thus, having prece¬ 
dence, the favour of the court, great assiduity, 
and knowledge in law, he soon considerably 
extended his practice. To this, indeed, his 
great wariness and prudence, trenching on 
the boundaries of meanness, did not contribute 
a little. “He was exceedingly careful to keep 
fair with the cocks of the circuit,” especially 
Serjeant Earl, who was a miser, and with 
whom he was contented to travel, when no 
other would starve with him on his journeys. 
If he discovered a point which his leader had 
omitted, he would not excite dislike by moving 
it himself, but suggest it to his senior, and 
thus conciliate his regard. He was, also, to 
use the words of his biographer, “ a wonderful 
artist in nicking a judge’s tendency to serve 
his turn, and yet never failed to pay the greatest 
regard and deference to his opinion.” He 
never contested a point with a judge when he 
despaired to convince him, but resigned it, 
even when confident in its goodness, that he 
might not weaken his credit for the future. On 
the other hand, when the judge was wrongly 
on his side, and he knew it, he did not fail to 
echo, “ ay, my lord,” to the great annoyance of 
his rivals. Thus gifted by knowledge and 
pliancy, he soon “ from an humble beginner 


rejoicing at a cause that came to him, became 
cock of the circuit; and every one that had a 
•trial rejoiced to have him on his side.” One 
piece of artifice which he used on behalf of a 
relative is so curious, that we will insert it in 
the words of our author. 

“His lordship had a relation, one Mr. Whit¬ 
more, of Balms, near London, an humour- 
some old gentleman, but very famous for the 
mere eating and drinking part of house-keep¬ 
ing. He was owner oflRlWaterbpach, near 
Cambridge, and took a fancy that his estate 
ought not to pay tithes, and ordered his tenants 
expressly to pay none, with promise to defend 
them. The parson had no more to do but to 
go to law, and by advice brought an action 
of debt, for treble damages upon the statute 
against subtraction of tithes. The tenants got 
the whole demand to be put in one action; 
and that stood for trial at the assizes. Then he 
consults his cousin North, and retains him to 
defend this cause; but shows him no manner 
of title to a discharge. So he could but tell 
him he would be routed, and pay treble value 
of the tithes, and that he must make an end. 
This signified nothing to one that was aban¬ 
doned to his own testy humour. The cause' 
came on, and his lordship’s utmost endeavour 
was to fetch him off with the single value and 
costs ; and that point he managed very artifi¬ 
cially: for first, he considered that Archer was 
the judge, and it was always agreeable to him 
to stave off a long cause. After the cause was 
opened, his lordship, for the defendant, stepped 
forward, and told the judge that ‘ this would 
be a long and intricate cause, being a title to a 
discharge of tithes, which would require the 
reading a long series of records and ancient 
writings. That hi$ client was no quaker, to 
deny payments of tithes were due, in which 
case the treble value was by the law intended 
as a sort of penalty. But this was to be a trial 
of a title, which his client was advised he had 
to a discharge: therefore he moved, that the 
single value might be settled; and if the cause 
went for the plaintiff, he should have that and 
his costs (which costs, it seems, did not go if 
the treble value was recovered,) and then they 
would proceed to their title.’ The other side 
mutinied against this imposition of Mr. North, 
but the judge was for him, and they must be 
satisfied. Then did he open a long history of 
matters upon record, of bulls, monasteries, 
orders, greater and lesser houses, surrenders, 
patents, and a great deal more, very proper, if 
it had been true, while the counsel on the other 
side stared at him ; and, having done, they bid 
him go to his evidence. He leaned back, as 
speaking to the attorney, and then, My lord, 
said he, we are very unhappy in this cause. The 
attorney tells me, they forgot to examine their copies 
with the originals at the Tower; and (so folding 
up his brief) My lord, said he, they must have the 
verdict, and ivc must come belter prepared another 
time . So, notwithstanding all the mutiny the 
other side could make, the judge held them to 
it, and they were choused of the treble value. 
This was no iniquity, because it was not to 
defraud the duty, but to shift off the penalty. 
But the old gentleman told his cousin North, 
he had given awav his cause. His lordship 

F 





62 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


thought he had done him service enough; and 
could but just (with the help of the before 
said reason) satisfy himself that he had not 
done ill.” 

There is nothing very worthy of remark in 
the private life of Mr. North, before the begin¬ 
ning of his speculations for a settlement by 
marriage. These are exceedingly curious, 
not for their romance, but the want of it. In 
the good old times, when our advocate flou¬ 
rished, the language of sentiment was not in 
fashion. Some doubtless there were, perhaps 
not fewer than in these poetical days, in whose 
souls Love held its “high and hearted seat”— 
whose nice-attuned spirits trembled with every 
change of the intensest, yet most delicate of 
affections—whose whole existence was one 
fervent hope and one unbroken sigh. Since 
then, the breathings of their deep emotion— 
the words and phases which imperfectly in¬ 
dicated that which was passing within them, 
as light and airy bubbles rise up from the low¬ 
est spring to the surface of tranquil waters— 
have become the current language of every 
transitory passion, and serve to garnish out 
every prudent match as a necessary part of 
the wedding finery. Things were not thus 
confounded by our heartier ancestors. Lan¬ 
guage was some indication of the difference 
of minds, as dress was of ranks. The choice 
spirits of the time had their prerogative of 
words and figures, as the ancient families had 
of their coats of arms. The greater part of 
mankind, who never feel love in its depth or 
its purity, were contented to marry and be 
given in marriage .without the affectation of its 
language. Men avowedly looked for good 
portions, and women for suitable jointures— 
they made the contract for mutual support and 
domestic comfort in good faith, and did not 
often break it. They had their reward. They 
indulged no fairy dreams of happiness too 
etherial for earth, which, when dissipated, 
would render dreary the level path of exist¬ 
ence. Of their open, plain-hearted course of 
entering into the matrimonial state, and of 
speaking about it, the Lord Keeper and his 
biographer are edifying examples. His Lord- 
ship, as his fortune improved, felt the neces¬ 
sity of domestic comfort, and wisely;thought 
his hours of leisure would be spent most hap¬ 
pily in a family, “which is never well settled 
without a mistress.” “He fancied,” says his 
eulogist, “he might pretend to as good a for¬ 
tune in a match as many others had found, 
who had less reason to expect it; but without 
some advantage that way, he was not disposed 
to engage himself.” His first attempt in this 
laudable pursuit was to obtain the daughter 
of an old usurer, which we will give in our 
author’s words : 

“There came to him a recommendation of 
a lady, who was an only daughter of an old 
usurer of Gray’s-inn, supposed to be a good 
fortune in present, for her father was rich; 
but after his death, to become worth nobody 
could tell what. His lordship got a sight of 
the lady, and did not dislike her; thereupon 
he made the old man a visit, and a proposal 
of himself to marry his daughter. There ap¬ 
peared no symptoms of discouragement; but 


only the old gentleman asked him what estate 
his father intended to settle upon him for pre¬ 
sent maintenance, jointure, and provision for 
children. This was an inauspicious question; 
for it was plain that the family had not estate 
enough for a lordship, and none would be to 
spare for him. Therefore he said to his wor¬ 
ship only, That ivhen he icould be pleased to declare 
what portion he intended to give his daughter, he 
would write to his father, and make him acquainted ' 
with his answer. ' And so they parted, and his 
lordship was glad of his escape, and resolved to 
give that affair a final discharge, and never to 
come near the terrible old fellow any more. 
His lordship had, at that time, a stout heart, 
and could not digest the being so slighted ; as 
if, in his present state, a profitable profession, 
and future hopes, were of no account. If he 
had had a real estate to settle, he should not 
have stooped so low as to match with his 
daughter: and thenceforward despised his alli¬ 
ance.” 

His next enterprise was directed to the “flou¬ 
rishing widow” of Mr. Edward Palmer, who 
had been his most intimate friend. Her family 
favoured his addresses—the lady did not re¬ 
fuse him—but flirted, coquetted, and worried 
him, until he was heartily tired of being “held 
in a course of bo-peep play by a crafiy widow.” 
Her friends still urged him to persevere, 
which he did to please them rather than him¬ 
self, until she relieved him by marrying another 
of her suitors. His third exploit is thus amus¬ 
ingly related. 

“Another proposition came to his lordship, 
by a city broker, from Sir John Lawrence, 
who had many daughters, and those reputed 
beauties; and the fortune was to be £6000. 
His lordship went and dined with the aider- 
man, and liked the lady, who (as the way is) 
was dressed out for a muster. And coming to 
treat, the portion shrank to £5000, and, upon 
that, his lordship parted, and was not gone far 
before Mr. Broker (following) came to him 
and said, Sir John would give £500 more, at 
the birth of the first child; but that would not 
do, for his lordship hated such screwing. Not 
long after this despatch, his lordship was made 
the king’s solicitor general, and then the bro¬ 
ker came again, with news that Sir John 
would give £10,000. No; his lordship said, 
after such usage he would not proceed, if he might 
have £20,000. So ended that aflair; and his 
lordship’s mind was once more settled in tran¬ 
quillity.” 

At last, after these repeated disappointments, 
his mother “laid her eyes ” on the Lady Fran¬ 
ces Pope, one of three co-heiresses, as a wife 
for her son—and with his consent made over¬ 
tures on his behalf. After some little difficul¬ 
ties respecting his lordship’s fortune, this 
match was happily concluded, and is cele¬ 
brated by his biographer as “ made in heaven.” 
The lady, however, died of a consumption, in 
the prime of her days. On this occasion, our 
author rejoices that “his lordship’s good stars” 
forced him to London about a fortnight be¬ 
fore her death, because nearness to persons 
dying of consumptions is perilous—and “ when 
she must expire, and probably in his arms, 
he might have received great damage in his 



NORTH’S LIFE OF LORD GUILFORD. 


63 


health.” Her husband erected a monument to 
her memory, on which a tremendous Latin 
epitaph was engraven, commemorating her 
father, husband, children and virtues. Our 
author here expresses his opinion, that the eu¬ 
logistic part should be left out, “because it is 
in the power of every cobbler to do the like;” 
but that the account of families cannot be too 
far extended, because they may be useful as 
evidence of pedigree. This is a curious self- 
betrayal, by a man of rank and family. The 
utility of monumental inscriptions, detailing 
the dignities of ancestry, is, indeed urged— 
but it is easy to # perceive the antithesis com¬ 
pleted in the writer’s mind—between all the 
virtues which a cobbler might share, and the 
immunities of which the high-born alone are 
partakers. 

Meanwhile, his lordship proceeded to honour 
and fortune. He was made solicitor-general, 
became a candidate for the borough of Lynn 
Regis; and, on a visit, with his accustomed 
prudence, “ regaled the corporation with a very 
handsome treat, which cost him about one hun¬ 
dred pounds.” He could not, however, be pre¬ 
sent at the election, but sent our author, and 
Mr. Matthew Johnson, “ to ride for him,” with 
proper directions to economize their pecuniary 
resources. They did so;—“ took but one house, 
and there allowed scope for all taps to run;” 
and as there was no opposition, all passed well, 
and“ the plenipos returned with their purchase, 
the return of the election, back to London.” 
His lordship, however, lost his seat by the vote 
of the House—despatched “his plenipos once 
more to regain it, which they did, though with 
more difficulty than they first procured it; for 
Sir Simon Taylor, a wealthy merchant of wine, 
in that town, stood, and had procured a butt of 
sherry, which butt of sherry was a potent ad¬ 
versary.” Soon after, his lordship was made 
attorney-general, and some doubts arose as 
to his right to sit in parliament; which, how¬ 
ever, he was able to remove. 

In due time, Mr. North, wearied with the 
perpetual labours of extensive practice, not 
only in the courts of law but of equity, longed 
for, and obtained, the elevated repose of the 
cushion of the Court of Common Pleas. Here 
he sedulously endeavoured to resist the en¬ 
croachments of the King’s Bench, and showed 
himself sufficiently versed in the arts by which 
each of the courts attempted to overreach the 
other, and which would have done credit to 
the sagacity of a solicitor at the Old Bailey. 
His biographer relates various instances of his 
skill in detecting falsehood, which do not quite 
entitle him to be regarded as a second Solomon 
—of his management of counsel, which we 
have seen excelled in no distant period—and 
of his repartees, which are the worst ever 
gravely told as good things by a devoted ad¬ 
mirer. The story of “ the dumb day” is, how¬ 
ever, worth transcribing, especially as our au¬ 
thor, though he speaks of himself as usual, in 
the third person, was the party on whose be¬ 
half the authority of the chief justice was 
exerted. 

“ It hath been the usage of the King’s Bench, 
at the side bar below in the hall, and of the 
Common Pleas, in the chamber within the 


treasury, to hear attorneys, and young counsel, 
that came to move them about matters of form 
and practice. His lordship had a younger 
brother (Hon. Roger North) who was of the 
profession of the law. He was newly called 
to the bar, and had little to do in the King’s 
Bench; but the attorneys of the Common 
Pleas often retained him to move for them in 
the treasury, such matters as were proper 
there, and what they might have moved them¬ 
selves. But however agreeable this kind of 
practice was to a novitiate, it was not worthy 
the observation it had; for once or twice a 
week was the utmost calculate of these mo¬ 
tions. But the sergeants thought that method 
was, or might become, prejudicial to them, who 
had a monopoly of the bar, and would have no 
water go by their mill, and supposed it was high 
time to put a stop to such beginnings, for fear 
it might grow worse. But the doubt was, how 
they should signify their resentment, so as to 
be effectually remedial. At length they agreed, 
for one day, to make no motions at all; and 
opportunity would fall for showing the reason 
how the court came to have no business. 
When the court (on this dumb day, as it was 
called) was sat, the chief justice gave the 
usual signal to the eldest sergeant to move. 
He bowed, and had nothing to move: so the 
next, and the next, from end to end of the bar. 
The chief, seeing this, said, Brothers, I think we 
must rise; here is no business. Then an attorney 
steps forward, and called to a sergeant to make 
his motion; and, after that, turned to the court 
and said, that he had given the sergeant his 
fee, and instructions over night, to move for 
him, and desired he might do it. But pro¬ 
found silence still. The chief looked about, 
and asked, What was the matter ? An attorney, 
that stood by, very modestly said, that he feared 
the sergeants took it ill that motions were made in 
the Treasury. Then the chief scented the whole 
matter; and, Brothers, said he, I think a very 
great affront is offered to us, which we ought,,for the 
dignity of the court, to resent. But that ice may 
do nothing too suddenly, but take consideration at 
full leisure, and maturely, let us now rise, and to¬ 
morrow morning give order as becomes tis. And 
do you attorneys come all here to-morrow, and care 
shall be taken for your despatch, and, rather than 
fail, we will hear you, or your clients, or the bar¬ 
risters at law, or any person that thinks fit to ap¬ 
pear in business, that the law may have its course ; 
and so the court rose. This was like thunder 
to the sergeants, and they fell to quarrelling, 
one with another about being the cause of this 
great evil they had brought upon themselves: 
for none of them imagined it would have had 
such a turn as this was, that shaked what was 
the palladium of the coif, the sole practice 
there. In the afternoon, they attended the 
chief, and the other judges of the court, and, in 
great humility, owned their fault, and begged 
pardon, and that no farther notice might be 
taken of it; and they would be careful not to 
give the like offence for the future. The chief 
told them, that the affront was in public, aniS 
in the face of the court, and they must make 
their recognitions there next morning, and in 
such a manner as the greatness of their offence 
demanded; and then they should hear what 



64 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


the court would say to them. Accordingly 
they did; and the chief first, and, then, the 
rest, in order, gave them a formal chiding 
with acrimony enough; all which, with de¬ 
jected countenances, they were bound to hear. 
When this discipline was over, the chief 
pointed to one to move; which he did, (as 
they said,)more like one crying than speaking ; 
and so ended the comedy,.as it was acted in 
Westminster-hall, called the dumb day.” 

His lordship used his travels on the circuit 
as the means of securing an interest in the 
country gentlemen; and with so much success, 
that Dr. Mew, Bishop of Winchester, who was 
called Patels, from a black plaster which he 
wore to cover a wound received in the civil 
war, termed him “ delicice occidentis,” the dar¬ 
ling of the West; and the western members 
of parliament “did so firmly ensconce him that 
his enemies could never get a clever stroke at 
him.” Once, indeed, he was taken in by a 
busy fanatic, who importuned the judges to sup 
with him, at his house near Exeter; and, 
having them fairly in his power, inflicted on 
them a long extemporaneous prayer, “after 
the Presbyterian way,” which gave occasion to> 
much merriment at the expense of their lord- 
ships, who were said to have been at a con¬ 
venticle, and in danger of being presented 
with all their retinue for that offence by the 
grand jury. He also narrowly escaped being 
made the dupe or tool of the infamous Bedloe, 
who sent for him under pretence of making a 
confession. Excepting in so far as an exces¬ 
sive timidity influenced him, he appears to 
have acted in his high office with exemplary 
justice and wisdom. He was, indeed, a most 
faint-hearted judge, which his biographer, as 
in duty bound, discloses to his honour. He 
dreaded the trying of a witch, because he dis¬ 
believed the crime: and yet feared to offend the 
superstitious vulgar. On this nice subject, our 
author observes— 

“ It is seldom that a poor old wretch is brought 
to trial upon that account, but there is, at the 
heels of her, a popular rage that does little less 
than demand her to be put to death: and, if a 
judge is so clear and open as to declare against 
that impious vulgar opinion , that the devil him¬ 
self has power to torment .and kill innocent 
children, or that he is pleased to divert him¬ 
self with the good people’s cheese, butter, pigs, 
and geese, and the like errors of the ignorant 
and foolish rabble; the countrymen (the triers) 
cry this judge hath no religion, for he doth not 
believe witches ; and so, to show they have 
some, hang the poor wretches. All which 
tendency to mistake, requires a very prudent 
and moderate carriage in a judge, whereby to 
convince, rather by detecting of the fraud, than 
by denying authoritatively such power to be 
given to old women.” 

His lordship did, indeed, whenever he could, 
lay open the imposture, and procure the ac¬ 
quittal of witches. But when Mr. Justice Ray¬ 
mond and he went the circuit together, and his 
co-judge condemned two women to death for 
the crime, he appears to have contented him¬ 
self, “ with concern, that his brother Raymond’s 
passive behaviour should let them die,” with¬ 
out himself making any effort to save them. 


His opinions respecting libels were surprising¬ 
ly liberal for a judge of the cavalier party, and 
may serve to put shame to the courtly lawyers 
of more enlightened days. 

“ As to the business of lies and libels, which, 
in those days, were an intolerable vexation to 
the court, especially finding that the commu¬ 
nity of gentle and simple strangely ran in with 
them ; it was moved that there should be more 
messengers of the press, and spies, who should 
discover secret printing-houses, (which, then, 
were against law,) and take up the hawkers that 
sold libels, and all other persons that dispersed 
them, and inflict severe punishments on all 
that were found guilty. But hfs lordship was 
of a very different opinion, and said that this 
prosecution would make them but the more 
inquired after; and it was impossible to hinder 
the promulgation of libels ; for the greediness 
of every one to get them, and the high price, 
would make men, of desperate fortunes, ven¬ 
ture any thing: and, in such cases, punish¬ 
ments never regulate the abuse ; but it must be 
done, if at all, by methods undermining the en¬ 
couragement: yet, ifany were caught,he thought 
it was fit to make severe examples of them. 
But an extraordinary inquisition to be set up, 
and make so much noise, and the punishment 
falling, as was most likely, not on the authors 
and abettors, but some poor wretches that 
sought to get a penny by selling them, would, 
as he thought, rather incense than abate the 
abuse. His notion was, that his majesty should 
order nothing extraordinary, to make people 
imagine he was touched to the quick; but to 
set up counter writers that as every libel came 
out should take it to task, and answer it. And, 
so, all the diurnal lies of the town also would 
be met with: for said he, either we are in the 
wrong, or in the right; if the former, we must do 
as usurped powers, use force, and crush all our ene¬ 
mies right or wrong. But there is no need of that, 
for ice are in the right; for who will pretend not 
to oivn his majesty’s authority according to law ? 
And nothing is.done, by his majesty and his minis¬ 
ters, but what the law will warrant, and xvhat 
should we be afraid of? Let them lie and accuse 
till they are weary, while wc declare at the same time, 
as may be done with demonstration, that all they 
say is false and unjust; and the better sort of the 
people whom truth sways, when laid before them, 
will be with iis. This counsel was followed; and 
some clever writers were employed, such as 
were called the Observator and Heraclitus,for 
a constancy, and others, with them, occasion¬ 
ally; and then they soon wrote the libellers 
out of the pit, and during that king’s life, the 
trade of libels, which before had been in great 
request, fell to nothing.” 

Mr. North, notwithstanding the liberality of 
some of his opinions, was made a privy coun¬ 
sellor, and some time after Lord Keeper of the 
Great Seal. He opposed Jeffries, the cele¬ 
brated Lord Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, 
with mildness and caution, and secured and 
used wisely the esteem of his sovereign. .-He 
appears to have foreseen, that the consequence 
of the violent and arbitrary measures, which 
he was unable to prevent, would, if continued, 
work the downfall of the Stuart family. His 
private life was temoerate and regular, un- 




NORTH’S LIFE OF LORD GUILFORD. 


65 


tainted with the vices of the times. His bro¬ 
ther-in-law, actually fearing his virtue might 
be visited as a libel on the court, seriously ad¬ 
vised him to keep a mistress in his own de¬ 
fence; “for he understood, from very great 
men, that he was ill looked upon for want of 
doing so; because he seemed continually to 
reprehend them;” which notable advice was 
concluded by an offer, “that, if his lordship 
pleased, he would help him to one.” His lord¬ 
ship’s regard to virtue, as well as his usual 
caution, which told him, “there was no spy 
like a female,” made him regard this proffer 
with a scorn, which utterly puzzled his adviser. 
He was, however, tremulously alive to ridicule. 
Aware of this infirmity, Jeffries and the Earl 
of Sunderland took advantage of a harmless 
visit he made to see a rhinoceros, to circulate 
a report that he had ridden on the animal. 
This threw him into a state of rage and vexa¬ 
tion truly surprising; he turned on his ques¬ 
tioners with unexampled fury, was seriously 
angry with Sir Dudley North for not contra¬ 
dicting it with sufficient gravity, and sent for 
him that he might add his testimony to his 
own solemn denial. His biographer, who ac¬ 
tually performs the duty of confidante, as de¬ 
scribed in The Critic, to laugh, weep, or go mad 
with the principal, is also in a towering pas¬ 
sion at the charge. He calls it, “ an impudent 
buffoon lie, which Satan himself would not 
have owned for his legitimate issue;” and is 
provoked beyond measure, that “ the noble 
Earl, with Jeffries, and others of that crew, 
made merry, and never blushed at the lie of 
their own making; but valued themselves 
upon it, as a very good jest.” He was afflicted 
by no other “ great calumny,” notwithstanding 
the watchfulness of his foes. One of his last 
public acts was to stop the bloody proceedings 
of Jeffries in the West, which he did by his 
influence with the king. He did not long sur¬ 
vive the profligate prince, whom he sometimes 
was able to guide and to soften. He walked 
in the coronation of James the Second, when 
imperfectly recovered from a fever; and, after 
a gradual decline of some months, expired at 
his house at Wroxton, really hurried to the 
grave by the political broils and vexations at¬ 
tendant on the Great Seal. “That pestiferous 
lump of metal,” as our author terms it, was 
given to Jeffries, whom it did not save from an 
end more disastrous and fearful. 

The work before us, as we have already in¬ 
timated, is rendered more interesting by the 
admirable characters which it contains of the 
old lawyers. These are all drawn, not onl£* 
with great and most felicitous distinctness, but 
are touched in a mild, gentlemanly, and hu¬ 
mane spirit, which it is refreshing to recog¬ 
nise in these days of acrimony and slander. 
Even those who were most opposed in interest 
and in prejudice to the author, receive ample 
justice from his hands. Hale, whose dislike 
to the court rendered him obnoxious to the 
author, or, which is the same thing, to his bro¬ 
ther, is drawn at full length in all his austere 
majesty. Even Serjeant Maynard, the ac¬ 
knowledged “ anti-restoration lawyer,” whose 
praise was in all the conventicles, and who 
was a hard rival of “his lordship,” receives 

9 


due acknowledgment of his learning, and thai 
he was, to his last breath, true as steel to the 
principles of the times when he began his 
career. Sir William Scraggs, the fierce vo¬ 
luptuary and outrageous politician, is softened 
to us by the single engaging touch, that “in 
his house every day was a holyday.” And 
Jeffries himself, as exhibited here, seems to 
have had something of real human warmth 
within him, which redeems him from utter 
hatred. The following is a summary of his 
character. 

“ His friendship and conversation lay much 
among the good fellows and humourists; and 
his delights were, accordingly, drinking, laugh¬ 
ing, singing, kissing, and all the extravagancies 
of the bottle. He had a set of banterers, for 
the most part, near him ; as, in old time, great 
men kept fools to make them merry. And 
these fellows, abusing one another and their 
betters, were a regale to him. And no friend¬ 
ship or dearness could be so great, in private, 
which he would not use ill, and to an extrava¬ 
gant degree, in public. No one, that had any 
expectations from him, was safe from his 
public contempt and derision, which some of 
his minions at the bar bitterly felt. Those 
above, or that could hurt or benefit him, and 
none else, might depend on fair quarters at 
his hands. When he was in temper , and matters 
indifferent came before him, he became his seat of 
justice better than any other I ever saw in his place. 
He took a pleasure in mortifying fraudulent 
attorneys, and would deal forth his severities 
with a sort of majesty. He had extraordinary 
natural abilities, but little acquired, beyond 
what practice in affairs had supplied. He 
talked fluently, and with spirit; and his weak¬ 
ness was that he could not reprehend without 
scolding; and in such Billingsgate language, 
as should not come out of the mouth of any 
man. He called it giving a lick with the rough 
side of his tongue. It was ordinary to hear him 
say, Go, you are a filthy, lousy, nitty rascal ; with 
much more of like elegance. Scarce a day 
passed that he did not chide some one, or other, 
of the bar, when he sat in the Chancery ; and 
it was commonly a lecture of a quarter of an 
hour long. And they used to say, This is yours ; 
my turn will be to-morrow. He seemed to lay 
nothing of his business to heart, nor care what 
he did, or left undone; and spent, in the Chan¬ 
cery court, what time he thought fit to spare. 
Many times, on days of causes at his house, 
the company have waited five hours in a morn¬ 
ing, and, after eleven, he hath come out inflamed 
and staring like one distracted. And that visage 
he put on when he animadverted on such as he 
took offence at, which made him a terror to real 
offenders; whom also he terrified with his face 
and voice, as if the thunder of the day of judgment 
broke over their heads : and nothing ever made 
men tremble like his vocal inflictions. He 
loved to insult, and was bold without check 
but that only when his place was uppermost 
To give an instance. A city attorney was pe¬ 
titioned against for some abuse ; and affidavit 
was made that wnen he was told of my lord 
chancellor, My lord chancellor, said he, I made 
him; meaning his being a means to bring him 
early into city business. When this affidavit 
f 2 



66 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


was read, Well, said the lord chancellor, then I 
will lay my maker by the heels. And, with that 
conceit, one of his best old friends went to jail. 
One of these intemperances was fatal to him. 
There was a scrivener of Wapping brought to 
hearing for relief against a bummery bond ; 
the contingency of losing all being showed, the 
bill was going to be dismissed. But one of 
the plaintiff’s counsel said that he was a 
strange fellow, and sometimes went to church, 
sometimes to conventicles; and none could 
tell what to make of him ; and it teas thought he 
was a trimmer. At that the chancellor fired; 
and, A trimmer ! said he; I have heard much of 
that monster, but never saw one. Come forth, Mr. 
Trimmer, turn you round, and let us see your shape : 
and, at that rate, talked so long that the poor 
fellow was ready to drop under him ; but, at 
last the bill was dismissed with costs, and he 
went his way. In the hall, one of his friends 
asked him how he came off] Came off, said 
he, 1 am escaped from the terrors of that man’s face, 
which I would scarce undergo again to save my life ; 
I shall certainly have the frightful impression of it as 
long as I live. Afterwards, when the Prince of 
Orange came, and all was in confusion, this lord 
chancellor, being very obnoxious, disguised 
himself in order to go beyond sea. He was in a 
seaman’s garb, and drinking a pot in a cellar. 
This scrivener came into the cellar after some 
of his clients : and his eye caught that face, 
which made him start; and the chancellor 
seeing himself eyed, feigned a cough, and 
turned to the wall with his pot in his hand. 
But Mr. Trimmer went out, and gave notice that 
he was there ; whereupon the mob flowed in, 
and he was in extreme hazard of his life; but 
the lord mayor saved him and lost himself. 
For the chancellor being hurried with such 
crowd and noise before him, and appearing so 
dismally, not only disguised, but disordered; 
and there having been an amity between them, 
as also a veneration on the lord mayor’s part, 
he had not spirits to sustain the shock, but fell 
down in a swoon ; and, in not many hours 
after, died. But this Lord Jeffries came to the 
seal without any concern at the weight of duty 
incumbent upon him; for, at the first, being 
merry over a bottle with some of his old 
friends, one of them told him that he would 
find the business heavy. No, said he, I’ll make 
it light. But, to conclude with a strange in¬ 
consistency, he would drink and be merry, 
kiss and slaver, with these bon companions 
over night, as the way of such is, and the 
next day fall upon them, ranting and scolding 
with a virulence unsufferable.” 

But the richest portion of these volumes is 
the character of the Lord Chief Justice Saun¬ 
ders, the author of the Reports which Mr. Ser¬ 
jeant Williams has rendered popular by clus¬ 
tering about them the products of his learned 
industry. He has a better immortality in the 
memoir. What a picture is exhibited of the 
stoutest industry, joined with the most luxu¬ 
rious spirit of enjoyment—of the most intense 
acquaintance with nice technicalities and the 
most bounteous humour—of more distressing 
infirmities and scarcely less wit than those of 
Falstaff! What a singular being is here— 
what a laborious, acute, happy and affectionate 


spirit in a loathsome frame I—But, we forget; 
—we are indulging ourselves, when we ought 
to gratify our readers. 

“The Lord Chief Justice Saunders suc¬ 
ceeded in the room of Pemberton. ■ His cha¬ 
racter, and his beginning, were equally strange. 
He was at first no better than a poor beggar 
boy, if not a parish foundling, without known pa¬ 
rents or relations. He had found a way to live 
by obsequiousness (in Clement’s-Inn, as I re¬ 
member) and courting the attorney’s clerks for 
scraps. The extraordinary observance and 
diligence of the boy made the society willing 
to do him good. He appeared very ambitious 
to learn to write; and one of the attorneys 
got a board knocked up at a window on the 
top of a staircase; and that was his desk, 
where he sat and wrote after copies of court 
and other hands the clerks gave him. He made 
himself so expert a writer that he took in busi¬ 
ness, and earned some pence by hackney 
writing. And thus, by degrees, he pushed his 
faculties, and fell to forms, and, by books that 
were lent him, became an exquisite entering 
clerk ; and by the same course of improvement 
of himself, an able counsel, first in special 
pleading, then, at large. And, after he was 
called to the bar, had practice, in the King’s 
Bench court, equal with any there. As to his 
person, he was very corpulent and beastly ; a 
mere lump of morbid flesh. He used to say, 
by his troggs, (such a humorous way of talking 
he affected,) none could say he wanted issue of his 
body, for he had nine in his back. He was a fetid 
mass that offended his neighbours at the bar 
in the sharpest degree. Those, whose ill for¬ 
tune it was to stand near him, were confessors, 
and, in summer-time, almost martyrs. This 
hateful decay of his carcass came upon him 
by continued sottishness; for, to say nothing of 
brandy, he was seldom without a pot of ale at 
his nose, or near him. That exercise was all 
he used ; the rest of his life was sitting at his 
desk, or piping at home ; and that home was a 
tailor’s house in Butcher-Row, called his 
lodging, and the man’s wife was his nurse, or 
worse ; but by virtue of his money, of which he 
made little account, though he got a great deal, he 
soon became master of the family ; and, being 
no changeling, he never removed, but was true 
to his friends, and they to him, to the last hour 
of his life. 

“ So much for his person and education. As 
for his parts, none had them more lively than 
he. Wit and repartee, in an affected rusticity, 
was natural to him. He was ever ready, and 
never at a loss; and none came so near as he 
to be a match for Serjeant Maynard. His 
great dexterity was in the art of special plead¬ 
ing, and he would lay snares that often caught 
his superiors, who were not aware of his traps. 
And he was so fond of success for his clients 
that, rather than fail, he would set the court 
hard with a trick; lor which he met sometimes 
with a reprimand, which he would wittily ward 
off, so that no one was much offended with 
him. But Hales could not bear his irregularity 
of life; and for that, and suspicion of his 
tricks, used to bear hard upon him in the court. 
But no ill usage from the bench was too hard 
for his hold of business, being such as scarcr 





NORTH’S LIFE OF LORD GUILFORD. 


67 


any could do but himself. With all this, he 
had a goodness of nature and disposition in so 
great a degree that he may be deservedly styled 
a philanthrope. He was a very Silenus to the 
boys, as, in this place, I may term the students 
of the law, to make them merry whenever they 
had a mind to it. He had nothing of rigid or 
austere in him. If any, near him at the bar, 
grumbled at his stench, he ever converted the 
complaint into content and laughing with the 
abundance of his wit. As to his ordinary 
dealing, he was as honest as the driven snow 
was white; and why not, having no regard for 
money, nor desire to be rich] And, for good 
nature and condescension, there was not his fel¬ 
low. I have seen him, for hours and half hours 
together, before the court sat, stand at the bar, 
with an audience of students over against him, 
putting of cases, and debating so as suited 
their capacities, and encouraging their industry. 
And so in the Temple, he seldom moved with¬ 
out a parcel of youths hanging about him, and 
he merry and jesting with them. 

“It will be readily conceived that this man 
was never cut out to be a presbyter, or any 
thing that is severe and crabbed. In no time 
did he lean to faction, but did his business 
without offence to any. He put off officious 
talk of government or politics, with jests, and 
so made his wit a catholicon, or shield, to cover 
all his weak places and infirmities. When the 
court fell into a steady course of using the 
law against all kinds of offenders, this man 
was taken into the king’s business; and had 
the part of drawing and perusal of almost all 
indictments and informations that were then 
to be prosecuted, with the pleadings thereon if 
any were special; and he had the settling of 
the large pleadings in the quo warranto against 
London. His lordship had no sort of conver¬ 
sation with him, but in the way of business, 
and at the bar; but once after he was in the 
king’s business, he dined with his lordship, and 
no more. And there he showed another quali¬ 
fication he had acquired, and that was to play 
jigs upon a harpsichord ; having taught him¬ 
self with the opportunity of an old virginal of 
his landlady’s; but in such a manner, not for 
defect but figure, as to see him were a jest. 
The king, observing him to be of a free dispo¬ 
sition, loyal, friendly, and without greediness 
or guile, thought of him to be the chief justice 
of the King’s Bench at that nice time. And 
the ministry could not but approve of it. So 
great a weight was then at stake, as could not 
be trusted to men of doubtful principles, or 
such as any thing might tempt to desert them. 
While he sat in the Court of King’s Bench, he 
gave the rule to the general satisfaction of the 
lawyers. But his course of life was so differ¬ 
ent from what it had been, his business inces¬ 
sant, and, withal, crabbed; and his diet and 
exercise changed, that the constitution of his 
body, or head rather, could not sustain it, and 
tie fell into an apoplexy and palsy, which 
numbed his parts ; and he never recovered the 
strength of them. He out-lived the judgment 
in the quo warranto; but was not present, other¬ 
wise than by sending his opinion, by one of 
the judges, to be for the king, who, at the pro¬ 
nouncing of the judgment, declared it to be 


the court accordingly, which is frequently done 
in like cases.” 

Although we have been able to give but a 
few of the choice peculiarities of these volumes, 
our readers will be able to gather, from our ex¬ 
tracts, that the profession of the law was a 
very different thing in the reign of Charles .the 
Second, from what it is in the present era. 
There was something in it more robust and 
hearty than there is now. Lawyers treated on 
the dryest subjects, in a “ full and heightened 
style,” which now would receive merited ridi¬ 
cule, because it is natural no longer. When 
Lord Coke “wanders in the wilderness of the 
laws of the forest”—or stops to “ recreate him¬ 
self with a view of Dido’s deer”—or looks on 
his own fourth Institute, as “the high and 
honourable building of the jurisdiction of the 
courts”—we feel that he uses the language of 
metaphor, merely because he thinks in it. 
Modern improvement has introduced a division 
of labour among the faculties. The regions of 
imagination and of reality are separated by 
stricter and more definite limits, than in the 
days of old. Our poems and orations are 
more wild and extravagant, and our ordinary 
duties more dry and laborious. Men have 
learned to refine on their own feelings—to 
analyze all their sensations—to class all their 
powers, feelings, and fantasies, as in a museum; 
and to mark and label them so that they 
may never be applied, except to appropriate 
uses. The imagination is only cultivated as a 
kind of exotic luxury. No one unconsciously 
writes in a picturesque style, or suffers the 
colour of his thoughts to suffuse itself over 
his disquisitions, without caring for the effect 
on the reader. The rich conceit is either sup¬ 
pressed, or carefully reserved to adorn some 
cold oration where it may be duly applauded. 
Our ancestors permitted the wall-flower, when 
it would, to spread out its sweets from the 
massive battlement, without thinking there 
was any thing extraordinary in its growth, or 
desiring to transplant it to a garden, where it 
would add little fragrance to the perfume of 
other flowers. 

The study of the law has sunk of late years. 
Formerly, the path of those by whom it was 
chosen, though steep and rugged, was clear 
and open before them. Destitute of adventi¬ 
tious aids, they were compelled to salutary 
and hopeful toils. They were forced to trace 
back every doctrine to the principle which was 
its germ, and to search for their precedents 
amidst the remotest grandeur of our history. 
Patient labour was required of them, but their 
reward was certain. In the most barren and 
difficult parts of their ascent, they found, at 
least, in the masses which they surmounted, 
the stains and colourings of a humanizing an¬ 
tiquity to soften and to dignify their labours. 
But abridgments, commentaries, and digests 
without number, have precluded the necessity 
of these liberal researches, while the vast 
accumulation of statutes and decisions have 
rendered them almost hopeless. Instead of a 
difficult mountain to ascend, there is a briarjr 
labyrinth to penetrate. Wearied out with vain 
attempts, the student accepts such temporary 
helps as he can procure, and despairs of re- 




68 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


during the ever-increasing multitude of deci¬ 
sions to any fixed and intelligible principles. 
Thus his labours are not directed to a visible 
goal—nor cheered by the venerableness of 
old time—nor crowned with that certainty of 
conclusion, which is the best reward of scien¬ 
tific researches. The lot of a superficial stu¬ 
dent of a dry science, is, of all conditions, the 
most harassing and fruitless. The evil must 


increase until it shall work its own cure— 
until accumulated reports shall lose their au¬ 
thority— or the legislature shall be com¬ 
pelled, by the vastness of the mischief, to 
undertake the tremendous task of revising 
and condensing the whole statute law, and 
fixing the construction of the unw r ritten 
maxims within some tolerable boundaries. 


REVIEW OE THE DRAMATIC LITERATURE OF THE 

AGE OE ELIZABETH. 

[Edinburgh Review.] 


If Mr. Hazlitt has not generally met with 
impartial justice from his contemporaries, we 
must say that he has himself partly to blame. 
Some of the attacks of which he has been the 
object, have, no doubt, been purely brutal and 
malignant; but others have, in a great measu re, 
arisen from feelings of which he has himself 
set the example. His seeming carelessness of 
that public opinion which he would influence 
—his love of startling paradoxes—and his in¬ 
trusion of political virulence, at seasons when 
the mind is prepared only for the delicate in¬ 
vestigations of taste, have naturally provoked 
a good deal of asperity, and prevented the due 
appreciation of his powers. We shall strive, 
however, to divest ourselves of all preposses¬ 
sions, and calmly to estimate those talents and 
feelings which he has here brought to the con¬ 
templation of such beauty and grandeur, as 
none of the low passions of this “ ignorant 
present time” should ever be permitted to 
overcloud. 

Those who regard Mr. Hazlitt as an ordinary 
writer, have little right to accuse him of suf¬ 
fering antipathies in philosophy or politics to 
influence his critical decisions. He possesses 
one excellent quality, at least, for the office 
which he has chosen, in the intense admira¬ 
tion and love which he feels for the great au¬ 
thors on whose excellences he chiefly dwells. 
His relish for their beauties is so keen, that 
while he describes them, the pleasures which 
they impart become almost palpable to the 
sense ; and we seem, scarcely in a figure, to 
feast and banquet on their “nectared sweets.” 
He introduces us almost corporally into the 
divine presence of the Great of old time-r- 
enables us to hear the living oracles of wisdom 
drop from their lips—and makes us partakers, 
not only of those joys which they diffused, 
but of those which they felt in the inmost re¬ 
cesses of their souls. He draws aside the 
veil of Time with a hand tremulous with 
mingled delight and reverence; and descants, 
with kindling enthusiasm, on all the delicacies 
of that picture of genius which he discloses. 
His intense admiration of intellectual beauty 
seems always to sharpen his critical faculties. 
He perceives it, by a kind of intuitive power, 
how deeply soever it may be buried in rubbish; 


and separates it, in a moment, from all that 
would encumber or deface it. At the same 
time, he exhibits to us those hidden sources of 
beauty, not like an anatomist, but like a lover: 
he does not coolly dissect the form to show the 
springs whence the blood flows all eloquent, 
and the divine expression is kindled; but 
makes us feel it in the sparkling or softened 
eye, the wreathed smile, and the tender bloom. 
In a word, he at once analyzes and describes, 
so that our enjoyments of loveliness are not 
chilled, but brightened, by our acquaintance 
with their inward sources. The knowledge 
communicated in his lectures, breaks no sweet 
enchantment, nor chills one feeling of youth¬ 
ful joy. His criticisms, while they extend our 
insight into the causes of poetical excellence, 
teach us, at the same time, more keenly to 
enjoy, and more fondly to revere it. 

It must seem, at first sight, strange, that 
powers like these should haw failed to excite 
universal sympathy. Much, doubtless, of the 
coldness and misrepresentation cast on them, 
has arisen from causes at which we have 
already hinted—from the apparent readiness 
of the author to “ give up to party what was 
meant for mankind”—and*from the occasional 
breaking in of personal animosities on that 
deep harmony which should attend the reverent 
contemplation of genius. But w’e apprehend 
that there are other causes which have dimin¬ 
ished the influence of Mr. Hazlitt’s faculties, 
originating in his mind itself; and these we 
shall endeavour briefly to specify. 

The chief of these may, we think, be as¬ 
cribed primarily to the want of proportion, of 
arrangement, and of harmony, in his powers. 
His mind resembles the “ rich stronde” which 
Spencer has so nobly described, and to which 
he has himself likened the age of Elizabeth, 
where treasures of every description lie, with¬ 
out order, in inexhaustible profusion. Noble 
masses of exquisite marble are there, which 
might be fashioned to support a glorious tem¬ 
ple; and gems of peerless lustre, which would 
adorn the holiest shrine. He has no lack of 
the deepest feelings, the profoundest sentiments 
of humanity, or the loftiest aspirations after 
ideal good. But there are no great leading 
principles of taste to give singleness to his 





HAZLITT’S LECTURES ON THE DRAMA. 


69 


aims, nor any central points in his mind, around 
which his feelings may revolve, and his im¬ 
aginations cluster. There is no sufficient dis¬ 
tinction between his intellectual and his ima¬ 
ginative faculties. He confounds the truths of 
imagination with those of fact—the processes 
of argument with those of feeling—the immu¬ 
nities of intellect with those of virtue. Hence 
the seeming inconsistency of many of his doc¬ 
trines. Hence the want of all continuity in 
his style. Hence his failure in producing one 
single, harmonious, and lasting impression on 
the hearts of his hearers. He never waits to 
consider whether a sentiment or an image is 
in place—so it be in itself striking. The keen 
sense of pleasure in intellectual beauty, which 
is the best charm of his writings, is also his 
chief deluder. He cannot resist a powerful 
image, an exquisite quotation, or a pregnant 
remark, however it may dissipate, or even sub¬ 
vert, the general feeling which his theme should 
inspire. Thus, on one occasion, in the midst 
of a violent political invective, he represents 
the objects of his scorn as “having been be¬ 
guiled, like Miss Clarissa Harlowe, into a 
house of ill-fame, and, like her, defending them¬ 
selves to the last;” as if the reader’s whole 
current of feeling would not be diverted from 
all political disputes, by the remembrance thus 
awakened of one of the sublimest scenes of 
romance ever imbodied by human power. He 
will never be contented to touch that most 
strange and curious instrument, the human 
heart, with a steady aim, but throws his hand 
rapidly over the chords, mingling strange dis¬ 
cord with “ most eloquent music.” Instead of 
conducting us onward to a given object, he 
opens so many delicious prospects by the way- 
side, and suffers us to gaze at them so long, 
that we forget the end of our journey. He is 
perpetually dazzled among the sunbeams of 
his fancy, and plays with them in elegant fan¬ 
tasy, when he should point them to the spots 
where they might fall on truth and beauty, and 
render them visible by a clearer and lovelier 
radiance than had yet revealed them. 

The work before us is not the best verifica¬ 
tion of these remarks; for it has more of con¬ 
tinuity, and less of paradox, than any of his 
previous writings. With the exception of 
some strong political allusions in the account 
of the Sejanus of Ben Jonson, it is entirely 
free from those expressions of party feeling 
which respect for an audience, consisting of 
men of all parties, and men of no party, ought 
always to restrain. There is also none of that 
personal bitterness towards Messrs. Words¬ 
worth, Coleridge, and Southey, which disfigured 
his former lectures. His hostility towards 
these poets, the associates of his early days, 
has always, indeed, been mingled with some 
redeeming feelings which have heightened the 
regret occasioned by its public disclosure.— 
While he has pursued them with all possible 
severity of invective, and acuteness of sarcasm, 
he has protected their intellectual character 
with a chivalrous zeal. He has spoken as if 
« his only hate had sprung from his only love 
and his thoughts of its objects, deep rooted in 
old affection, could not lose all traces of their 
“primal sympathy.” His bitterest language I 


has had its dash of the early sweets, which no 
changes of opinion could entirely destroy. Still 
his audiences and his readers had ample 
ground of complaint for the intrusion of per¬ 
sonal feelings, in inquiries which should be 
sacred from all discordant emotions. We re¬ 
joice to observe, that this blemish is now 
effaced; and that full and free course is at last 
given to that deep humanity which has ever 
held its current in his productions, sometimes 
in open day, and sometimes beneath the soil 
which it fertilized, though occasionally dashed 
and thrown back in its course by the obstacles 
of prejudice and of passion. 

The first of these lectures consists of a gene¬ 
ral view 7 of the subject, expressed in terms of 
the deepest veneration and of the most pas¬ 
sionate eulogy. After eloquently censuring 
the gross prejudice, that genius and beauty are 
things of modern discovery, or that in old time 
a few amazing spirits shone forth amidst gene¬ 
ral darkness, as the harbingers of brighter 
days, the author proceeds to combat the notion 
that Shakspeare was a sort of monster of poet¬ 
ical genius, and all his contemporaries of an 
order far below him. 

“He, indeed, overlooks and commands the 
admiration of posterity; but he does it from 
the tabic land of the age in which he lived. 
He towered above his fellows‘in shade and 
gesture proudly eminent;’ but he was but one 
of a race of giants, the tallest, the strongest, 
the most graceful and beautiful of them ; but 
it was a common and noble brood. He was 
not something sacred and aloof from the vul¬ 
gar herd of men, but shook hands with Nature 
and the circumstances of the time; and is dis¬ 
tinguished from his immediate contemporaries, 
not in kind, but in degree, and greater variety 
of excellence. He did not form a class or 
species by himself, but belonged to a class or 
species. His age was necessary to him; nor 
could he have been wrenched from his place 
in the edifice, of which he was so conspicuous 
a part, without equal injury to himself and it. 
Mr. Wordsworth says of Milton, that ‘his soul 
was like a star, and dwelt apart.’ This cannot 
be said with any propriety of Shakspeare, who 
certainly moved in a constellation of bright 
luminaries, and ‘ drew after him the third part 
of the heavens.’” Pp. 12, 13. 

The author then proceeds to investigate the 
general causes of that sudden and rich deve¬ 
lopment of poetical feeling which forms his 
theme. He attributes it chiefly to the mighty 
impulse given to thought by the Reformation— 
to the disclosure of all the marvellous stores 
of sacred antiquity, by the translation of the 
Scriptures—and to the infinite sweetness, 
breathing from the divine character of the 
Messiah, with which he seems to imagine that 
the people were not familiar in darker ages. 
We are far from insensible to the exquisite 
beauty with which this last subject is treated; 
and fully agree with our author, that “ there is 
something in the character of Christ, of more 
sweetness and majesty, and more likely to 
work a change in the mind of man, than any 
to be found in history, whether actual or 
feigned.” But we cannot think that the gentle 
influences which that character shed upon the 





70 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


general heart, were weak or partial even before 
the translation of the Scriptures. The young 
had received it, not from books, but from the 
living voice of their parents, made softer in 
its tones by reverence and love. It had tem¬ 
pered early enthusiasm, and prompted visions 
of celestial beauty, in the souls even of the 
most low, before men had been taught to reason 
on their faith. The instances of the Saviour’s 
compassion—his wondrous and beneficent 
miracles—his agonies and death, did not lie 
forgotten during centuries, because the people 
could not read of them. They were written 
“on the fleshy tables of the heart,” and soft¬ 
ened the tenour of humble existence, while 
superstition, ignorance, and priestcraft held 
sway in high places. 

These old feelings of love, however, tended 
greatly to sweeten and moderate the first excur¬ 
sions of the intellect, when released from its 
long thraldom. The new opening of the stores 
of classic lore, of Ancient History, of Italian 
Poetry, and of Spanish Romance, contributed 
much, doubtless, to the incitement and the 
perfection of our national genius. The dis¬ 
covery of the New World, too, opened fresh 
fields for the imagination to revel in. “Green 
islands, and golden sands/ 5 says our author, 
“ seemed to arise, as by enchantment, out of the 
bosom of the watery waste, and invite the cu¬ 
pidity, or wing the imagination of the dream¬ 
ing speculator. Fairy land was realized in 
new and unknown worlds.”—“ Fortunate fields, 
and groves, and flowery vales—thrice happy 
isles,” were found floating “ like those Hespe¬ 
rian gardens famed of old,”—“beyond Atlantic 
seas, as dropped from the zenith.” ‘ Ancient 
superstitions also still lingered among the peo¬ 
ple. The romance of human life had not then 
departed. It “ was more full of traps and pit- 
falls; of moving accidents by flood and field: 
more way-laid by sudden and startling evils, 
it stood on the brink of hope and fear, or stum¬ 
bled upon fate unawares,—while imagination, 
close behind it, caught at and clung to the 
shape of danger, or snatched a wild and fear¬ 
ful joy from its escape.” The martial and 
heroic spirit was not dead. It was compara¬ 
tively an age of peace, “Like Strength repos¬ 
ing on his own right arm;” but the sound of 
civil combat might still be heard in the dis¬ 
tance,—the spear glittered to the eye of me¬ 
mory, or the clashing of armour struck on the 
imagination of the ardent and the young. The 
people of that day were borderers on the savage 
state, on the times of war and bigotry,—though 
themselves in the lap of arts, of luxury, and 
knowledge. They stood on the shore, and saw 
the billows rolling after the storm. They 
heard the tumult, and were still. Another 
source of imaginative feelings, which Mr. 
Hazlitt quotes from Mr. Lamb, is found in the 
distinctions of dress, and all the external sym¬ 
bols of trade, profession, and degree, by which 
“the surface of society was embossed with 
hieroglyphics, and poetry existed in act and 
complement extern.” Lastly, our author al¬ 
ludes to the first enjoyment and uncontrolled 
range of our old poets through Nature, whose 
fairest flowers were then uncropped,—and to 
the movements of the soul then laid open to 


their view, without disguise or control. All 
those causes Mr. Hazlitt regards as directed, 
and their immediate effects as united by the 
genius of our country, native, unaffected, 
sturdy, and unyielding. His lecture concludes 
with a character, equally beautiful and just, 
of the Genius of our Poetry, with reference to 
the classical models, as having more of Pan 
than of Apollo:—“but Pan is a God, Apollo 
is no more!” 

The five succeeding Lectures contain the 
opinions of the author on most of the celebrated 
works produced from the time of the Reforma¬ 
tion, until the death of Charles the First. The 
second comprises the characters of Lyly, Mar¬ 
low, Hey wood, Middleton, and Rowley. The 
account of Lyly’s Endymion is worthy of that 
sweet but singular work. The address of 
Eumenides to Endymion, on his awaking from 
his long sleep, “ Behold the twig to which thou 
laidest down thy head is become a tree,” is in¬ 
deed, as described by our author, “ an exqui¬ 
sitely chosen image, and dumb proof of the 
manner in which he has passed his life from 
youth to old age,—in a dream, a dream of 
love!” His description of Marlow’s qualities, 
when he says “there is a lust of power in his 
writings, a hunger and thirst after unrighteous¬ 
ness, a glow of the imagination unhallowed by 
any thing but its own energies,” is very striking. 
The characters of Middleton and Rowley in 
this Lecture, and those of Marston, Chapman, 
Deckar, and Webster in the third, are sketched 
with great spirit; and the peculiar beauties of 
each are ,dwelt on in a style and with a senti¬ 
ment congenial with the predominant feeling 
of the poet. At the close of the Lecture, the 
observation, that the old dramatic writers have 
nothing theatrical about them, introduces the 
following eulogy on that fresh delight which 
books are ever ready to yield us. 

“ Here, on Salisbury Plain, where I write 
this, even here, with a few old authors, I can 
manage to get through the summer or the win¬ 
ter months, without ever knowing what it is to 
feel ennui. They sit with me at breakfast, they 
walk out with me before dinner. After a long 
walk through unfrequented tracts,—after start¬ 
ing the hare from the fern, or hearing the 
wing of the raven rustling above my head, or 
being greeted with the woodman’s ‘ stern good¬ 
night’ as he strikes into his narrow homeward 
path,—I can take ‘mine ease at mine inn’ be¬ 
side the blazing hearth, and shake hands with 
Signor Orlando Frescobaldo, as the oldest ac¬ 
quaintance I have. Ben Jonson, learned 
Chapman, Master Webster, and Master Hey- 
wood are there; and, seated round, discourse 
the silent hours away. Shakspeare is there 
himself, rich in Cibber’s Manager’s coat. 
Spenser is hardly returned from a ramble 
through the woods, or is concealed behind a 
group of nymphs, fawns, and satyrs. Milton 
lies on the table as on an altar, never taken up 
or laid down without reverence. Lyly’s En¬ 
dymion sleeps with the moon that shines in 
at the window; and a breath of wind stirring 
at a distance, seems a sigh from the tree 
under which he grew old. Faustus dis¬ 
putes in one corner of the room with fiendish 
faces, and reasons of divine astrology. Bella* 






7; 


HAZLITT’S LECTURES ON THE DRAMA. 


front soothes Mattheo, Vittoria triumphs over 
her Judges, and old Chapman repeats one of 
the hymns of Homer, in his own fine trans¬ 
lation.” Pp. 136, 137. 

The spirit of this passage is very deep and 
cordial; and the expression, for the most part, 
exquisite. But we wonder that Mr. Hazlitt 
should commit so great an incongruity, as to 
represent the other poets around him in per¬ 
son, while Milton, introduced among the rest, 
is used only as the title of a book. Why are 
other authors to be “ seated round,” to cheer 
the critic’s retirement as if living,—while Mil- 
ton, like a petition in the House of Commons, 
is only ordered “ to lie upon the table !” 

In the Fourth Lecture, ample justice is done 
to Beaumont and Fletcher, Massinger and Ben 
Jonson; but we think the same measure is 
not meted to Ford. We cannot regard the 
author of “ ’Tis a Pity she’s a Whore,” and 
“ The Broken Heart,” as “ finical and fastidious.” 
We are directly at issue, indeed, with our au¬ 
thor on his opinions respecting the catastrophe 
of the latter tragedy. Calantha, Princess of 
Sparta, is celebrating the nuptials of a noble 
pair, with solemn dancing, when a mes¬ 
senger enters, and informs her that the 
king, her father, is dead:—she dances on. 
Another report is brought to her, that the sister 
of her betrothed husband is starved ;—she calls 
for the other change. A third informs her that 
Ithocles, her lover, is cruelly murdered ;—she 
complains that the music sounds dull, and 
orders sprightlier measures. The dance ended, 
she announces herself queen, pronounces sen¬ 
tence on the murderer of Ithocles, and directs 
the ceremonials of her coronation to be im¬ 
mediately prepared. Her commands are 
obeyed. She enters the Temple in white, 
crowned, while the dead body of her husband 
is borne on a hearse, and placed beside the 
altar; at which she kneels in silent prayer. 
After her devotions, she addresses Nearchus, 
Prince of Argos, as though she would choose 
him for her husband, and lays down all orders 
for the regulation of her kingdom, under the 
guise of proposals of marriage. This done, 
she turns to the body of Ithocles, “ the shadow 
of her contracted lord,” puts her mother’s wed¬ 
ding ring on his finger, “to new-marry him 
whose wife she is,” and from whom death 
shall not part her. She then kisses his cold 
lips, and dies smiling. This Mr. Hazlitt calls 
“ tragedy in masquerade,” “ the true false gal¬ 
lop of sentiment;” and declares, that “any 
thing more artificial and mechanical he can¬ 
not conceive.” He regards the whole scene as 
a forced transposition of one in Marston’s Mal¬ 
content, where Aurelia dances on in defiance 
to the world, when she hears of the death of a 
detested husband. He observes, “that a 
woman should call for music, and dance on 
in spite of the death of a husband whom she 
hates, without regard to common decency, is 
but too possible: that she should dance on 
with the same heroic perseverance, in spite of 
the death of her father, and of every one else 
whom she loves, from regard to common cour¬ 
tesy or appearance, is not surely natural. The 
passions may silence the voice of humanity; 
but it is, I think, equally against probability 


and decorum, to make both the passions and 
the voice of humanity give way (as in the ex¬ 
ample of Calantha) to a mere form of outward 
behaviour. Such a suppression of the strong¬ 
est and most uncontrollable feelings, can only 
be justified from necessity, for some great pur¬ 
pose,—which is not the case in Ford’s play; 
or it must be done for the effect and eclat of the 
thing, which is not fortitude but affectation.” 
The fallacy of this criticism appears to us to 
lie in the assumption, that the violent suppres¬ 
sion of her feelings by the heroine was a mere 
piece of court etiquette—a compliment to the 
ceremonies of a festival. Surely the object 
was noble, and the effort sublime. While the 
deadly force of sorrow oppressed her heart, 
she felt that she had solemn duties to dis¬ 
charge, and that, if she did not arm herself 
against affliction till they were finished, she 
could never perform them. She could seek 
temporary strength only by refusing to pause 
—by hurrying on the final scene; and dared 
not to give the least vent to the tide of grief, 
which would at once have relieved her over¬ 
charged heart, and left her, exhausted, to die. 
Nothing less than the appearance of gayety 
could hide or suppress the deep anguish of 
her soul. We agree with Mr. Lamb, whose 
opinion is referred to by our author, that there 
is scarcely in any other play “a catastrophe 
so grand, so solemn, and so surprising as 
this!” 

The Fifth Lecture, on Single Plays and 
Poems, brings into view many curious speci¬ 
mens of old humour, hitherto little known, and 
which sparkle brightly in their new setting. 
The Sixth, on Miscellaneous Poems and 
Works, is chiefly remarkable for the admira¬ 
ble criticism on the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sid¬ 
ney, with which it closes. Here the critic 
separates with great skill the wheat from the 
chaff, showing at once the power of his author, 
and its perversion, antPhow images of touch¬ 
ing beauty and everlasting truth are marred 
by “ the spirit of Gothic quaintness, criticism, 
and conceit.” The passage, which is far too 
long for quotation, makes us desire more earn¬ 
estly than ever that an author, capable of so 
lucid and convincing a development of his 
critical doctrines, would less frequently con¬ 
tent himself with giving the mere results of his 
thought, and even conveying these in the most 
abrupt and startling language. A remark ut¬ 
tered in the parenthesis of a sarcasm, or an 
image thrown in to heighten a piece of irony, 
might often furnish extended matter for the 
delight of those whom it now only disgusts or 
bewilders. 

The Seventh Lecture, on the works of Lord 
Bacon, compared as to style with those of Sir 
Thomas Browne and of Jeremy Taylor, is very 
unequal. The character of Lord Bacon is 
eloquent, and the praise sufficiently lavish; 
but it does not show any proper knowledge of 
his works. That of Jeremy Taylor is some¬ 
what more appropriate, but too full of gaudy 
images and mere pomp of words. The style 
of that delicious writer is ingeniously described 
as “prismatic;” though there is too much of 
shadowy chillness in the phrase, adequately 
to represent the warm and tender Dloom which 





72 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


he easts on all that he touches. And when we 
are afterwards told that it “ unfolds the colours 
of the rainbow ; floats like a bubble through 
the air; or is like innumerable dewdrops, 
that glitter on the face of morning, and twinkle 
as they glitter;”—we can only understand'that 
the critic means to represent it as variegated, 
light, and sparkling: but it appears to us that 
the style of Jeremy Taylor is like nothing un¬ 
substantial or airy. The blossoms put forth 
in his works spring from a deep and eternal 
stock, and have no similitude to any thing wa¬ 
vering or unstable. His account of Sir Tho¬ 
mas Browne, however, seems to us very cha¬ 
racteristic, both of himself and of that most 
extraordinary of English writers. We can 
make room only for a part of it. 

“ As Bacon seemed to bend all his thoughts 
to the practice of life, and to bring home the 
light of science ‘ to the bosoms and business 
of men,’ Sir Thomas Browne seemed to be of 
opinion, that the only business of life was to 
think; and that the proper object of specula¬ 
tion was, by darkening knowledge, to breed 
more speculation, and ‘find no end in wan¬ 
dering mazes lost.’ He chose the incompre¬ 
hensible and the impracticable, as almost the 
only subjects fit for a lofty and lasting contem¬ 
plation, or for the exercise of a solid faith. He 
cried out for an ‘oh altitudo’ beyond the heights 
of revelation ; and posed himself with apocry¬ 
phal mysteries as the pastime of his leisure 
hours. He pushes a question to the utmost 
verge of conjecture, that he may repose on the 
certainty of doubt: and he removes an object 
to the greatest distance from him, that he may 
take a high and abstracted interest in it, con¬ 
sider it in relation to the sum of things, not 
to himself, and bewilder his understanding in 
the universality of its nature, and the inscruta¬ 
bleness of its origin. His is the sublime of 
indifference; a passiojfc for the abstruse and 
imaginary. He turns the world round for his 
amusement, as if it were a globe of pasteboard. 
He looks down on sublunary affairs as if he 
had taken his station in one of the planets. 
The antipodes are next-door neighbours to 
him: and doomsday is not far off. With a 
thought he embraces both the poles ; the march 
of his pen is over the great divisions of geo¬ 
graphy and chronology. Nothing touches him 
nearer than humanity. He feels that he is 
mortal only in the decay of nature, and the 
dust of long-forgotten tombs. The finite is lost 
in the infinite. The orbits of the heavenly bo¬ 
dies, or the history of empires, are to him but 
a. point in time, or a speck in the universe. 
The great Platonic year revolves in one of his 
periods. Nature is too little for the grasp of 
his style. He scoops an antithesis out of fa¬ 
bulous antiquity, and rakes up an epithet from 
the sweepings of chaos. It is as if his books 
had dropped from the clouds, or as if Friar 
Bacon’s head could speak. He stands on the 
edge of the world of sense and reason, and gets 
a vertigo by looking down at impossibilities 
and chimeras. Or he busies himself with the 
mysteries of the Cabbala, or the enclosed se¬ 
crets of the heavenly quincunxes, as children are 
amused with tales of the nursery. The passion 
of curiosity (the only passion of childhood) had 


in him survived to old age, and had super* 
annuated his other faculties. He moralizes 
and grows pathetic on a mere idle fancy of his 
own, as if thought and being were the same, 
or as if‘all this world were one glorious lie.’ 
He had the most intense consciousness of con¬ 
tradictions and nonentities ; and he decks them 
out in the pride and pedantry of words, as if 
they were the attire of his proper person. The 
categories hang about his neck like the gold 
chain of knighthood: and he ‘walks gowned’ 
in the intricate folds and swelling drapery of 
dark sayings and impenetrable fiddles.” Pp. 
292—295. 

The Eighth and Last Lecture begins with 
a few words on the merits of Sheil, Tobin, 
Lamb, and Cornwall, who, in our own time, 
have written in the spirit of the elder drama¬ 
tists. The observations in this lecture, on the 
spirit of the romantic and classic literature, 
are followed by a striking development of the 
materials, and an examination of the success 
of the German drama. Mr. Hazlitt attributes 
the triumph of its monstrous paradoxes to those 
abuses and hypocrisies of society, those inco¬ 
herences between its professions and its mo¬ 
tives, which excite enthusiastic minds to seek 
for the opposite, at once, of its defects and 
blessings. His account of his own sensations 
on the first perusal of the Robbers, is one of 
the most striking passages in the work. 

“ I have half trifled with this subject; and I 
believe I have done so because I despaired of 
finding language for some old-rooted feelings 
I have about it, which a theory could neither 
give, nor can it take away. The Robbers 
was the first play I ever read; and the effect 
it produced upon me was the greatest. It 
stunned me like a blow; and I have not reco¬ 
vered enough from it to tell how it was. There 
are impressions which neither time nor cir¬ 
cumstances can efface. Were I to live much 
longer than I have any chance of doing, the 
books I have read when I was young, I can 
never forget. Five-and-twenty years have 
elapsed since I first read the translation of the 
Robbers, but they have not blotted the impres¬ 
sion from my mind; it is here still—an old 
dweller in the chambers of the brain. The 
scene, in particular, in w'hich Moor looks 
through his tears at the evening sun from the 
mountain’s brow, and says in his despair, ‘It 
was my wish like him to live, like him to die: 
it was an idle thought, a boy’s conceit,’ took 
first hold of my imagination,—and that sun 
has to me never set!” 

While we sympathize in all Mr. Hazlitt’s 
sentiments of reverence for the mighty works 
of the older times, we must guard against 
that exclusive admiration of antiquity, ren¬ 
dered fashionable by some great critics, which 
would induce the belief that the age of genius 
is past, and the world grown too old to be ro¬ 
mantic. We can observe in these Lectures, 
and in other works of their author, a jealousy 
of the advances of civilization as lessening the 
dominion of fancy. But this is, we think, a 
dangerous error; tending to chill the earliest 
aspirations after excellence, and to roll its 
rising energies back on the kindling soul. 
There remains yet abundant space for genius 




73 


WALLACE’S PROSPECTS OF MANKIND, &c. 


to possess; and science is rather the pioneer 
than the impeder of its progress. The level 
roads, indeed, which it cuts through unexplored 
regions, are, in themselves, less fitted for.its 
wanderings than the tangled ways through 
which it delights to stray; but they afford it 
new glimpses into the wild scenes and noble 
vistas which open near them, and enable it to 
deviate into fresh scenes of beauty, and hitherto 


unexplored fastnesses. The face of nature 
changes not with the variations of fashion 
One state of society may be somewhat more 
favourable to the development of genius than 
another; but wherever its divine seed is cast, 
there will it strike its roots far beneath the sur¬ 
face ol artificial life, and rear its branches into 
the heavens, far above the busy haunts of com¬ 
mon mortals. 


» 


VARIOUS PROSPECTS OE MANKIND, NATURE, AND 

PROVIDENCE. 

[Retrospective Review.] 


Mn. Wallace, the author of the work be¬ 
fore us, was of the number of those speculators 
who have delighted to form schemes of ideal 
felicity for their species. Men of this class, 
often despised as dreaming theorists, have been 
found among the best and wisest of all ages. 
Those, indeed, w T ho have seen the farthest into 
their nature, have found the surest grounds of 
hope even for its earthly progress. Their en¬ 
thusiasm has been, at the least, innoxious. The 
belief, that humanity is on the decline—that 
the energy of mam is decaying—that the heart 
is becoming harder—and that imagination and 
intellect are dwindling away—lays an icy 
finger on the soul, confirms the most debasing 
selfishness, and tends to retard the good which 
it denies. We propose, therefore, in this ar¬ 
ticle very cursorily to inquire how far the 
hopes of those who believe that man is, on the 
whole, advancing, are sanctioned by experience 
and by reason. 

But we must not forget, that, in the very 
work before us, an obstacle to the happiness 
of the species is brought forward, which has 
subsequently been explained as of a dreadful 
nature, and has been represented as casting 
an impenetrable gloom over the brightest an¬ 
ticipations of human progress. We shall first 
set it forth in the words of Wallace—then trace 
its expansion and various applications by Mal- 
thus—and inquire how far it compels us to de¬ 
spair for man. 

“ Under a perfect government, the inconve- 
niencies of having a family would be so en¬ 
tirely removed, children would be so well 
taken care of, and every thing become so 
favourable to populousness, that though some 
sickly seasons or dreadful plagues in particu¬ 
lar climates might cut off multitudes, yet, in 
general, mankind would increase so prodi¬ 
giously, that the earth would at last be over¬ 
stocked, and become unable to support its nu¬ 
merous inhabitants. 

“How long the earth, with the best culture 
of which it is capable from human genius and 
industry, might be able to nourish its perpetu¬ 
ally increasing inhabitants, is as impossible 
as it is unnecessary to be determined. It is 
not probable that it could have supported them 
during so long a period as since the creation i 

10 


I 

of Adam. But whatever may be supposed of 
the length of this period, of necessity it must 
be granted, that the earth could not nourish 
them for ever, unless either its fertility could 
be continually augmented, or, by some secret 
in nature, like what certain enthusiasts have 
expected from the philosopher’s stone, some 
wise adept in the occult sciences should invent 
a method of supporting mankind quite differ¬ 
ent from any thing known at present. Nay, 
though some extraordinary method of support¬ 
ing them might possibly be found out, yet if 
there was no bound to the increase of man¬ 
kind, which would be the case under a perfect 
government, there would not even be sufficient 
room for containing their bodies upon the sur¬ 
face of the earth, or upon any limited surface 
whatsoever. It would be necessary, therefore, 
in order to find room for such multitudes of 
men, that the earth should be continually en- 
largingin bulk, as an animal or vegetable body. 

“ Now, since philosophers may as soon at¬ 
tempt to make mankind immortal, as to sup¬ 
port the animal frame without food, it is equally 
certain, that limits are set to the fertility of the 
earth; and that its bulk, so far as is hitherto 
known, hath continued always the same, and 
probably could not be much altered without 
making considerable changes in the solar sys¬ 
tem. It would be impossible, therefore, to sup¬ 
port the great numbers of men who would be 
raised up under a perfect government; the 
earth would be overstocked at last, and the 
greatest admirers of such fanciful schemes 
must foresee the fatal period when they would 
come to an end, as they are altogether incon¬ 
sistent with the limits of that earth in which 
they must exist. 

“ What a miserable catastrophe of the most 
generous of all human systems of government! 
How dreadfully would the magistrates of such 
commonwealths find themselves disconcerted 
at that fatal period, when there was no longer 
any room for new colonies, and when the earth 
could produce no farther supplies! During 
all the preceding ages, while there was room 
for increase, mankind must have been happy; 
the earth must have been a paradise in the 
literal sense, as the greatest part of it must 
have been turned into delightful and fruitful 

G 










74 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


gardens. But when the dreadful time should 
at last come, when our globe, by the most 
diligent culture, could not produce what was 
sufficient to nourish its numerous inhabitants, 
what happy expedient could then be found out 
to remedy so great an evil ! 

“ In such a cruel necessity, must there be a 
law to restrain marriage 1 Must multitudes 
of women be shut up in cloisters, like the 
ancient vestals or modern nuns 1 To keep a 
balance between the two sexes, must a propor¬ 
tionable number of men be debarred from 
marriage ! Shall the Utopians, following the 
wicked policy of superstition, forbid their 
priests to marry; or shall they rather sacrifice 
men of some other profession for the good of 
the state 1 Or, shall they appoint the sons of 
certain families to be maimed at their birth, 
and give a sanction to the unnatural institu¬ 
tion of eunuchs ! If none of these expedients 
can be thought proper, shall they appoint a cer¬ 
tain number of infants to be exposed to death 
as soon as they are born, determining the pro¬ 
portion according to the exigencies of the state; 
and pointing out the particular victims by lot, 
or according to some established rule 1 Or, 
must they shorten the period of human life by 
a law, and condemn all to die after they had 
completed a certain age, which might be 
shorter or longer, as provisions were either 
more scanty or plentiful 1 Or what other me¬ 
thod should they devise (for an expedient 
would be absolutely necessary) to restrain 
the number of citizens within reasonable 
bounds ! 

“Alas! how unnatural and inhuman must 
every such expedient be accounted! The 
natural passions and appetites of mankind are 
planted in our frame, to answer the best ends 
for the happiness both of the individuals and 
of the species. Shall we be obliged to con¬ 
tradict such a wise order! Shall we be laid 
under the necessity of acting barbarously and 
inhumanly! Sad and fatal necessity! And 
which, after all, could never answer the end, 
but would give rise to violence and war. For 
mankind would never agree about such regu¬ 
lations. Force and arms must at last decide 
their quarrels, and the deaths of such as fall 
in battle leave sufficient provisions for the 
survivors, and make room for others to be born. 

“Thus the tranquillity and numerous bless¬ 
ings of the Utopian governments would come 
to an end; war, or cruel and unnatural cus¬ 
toms, be introduced, and a stop put to the in¬ 
crease of mankind, to the advancement of 
knowledge, and to the culture of the earth, in 
spite of the most excellent laws and wisest pre¬ 
cautions. The more excellent the laws had 
been, and the more strictly they had been ob¬ 
served, mankind must have sooner become 
miserable. The remembrance of former times, 
the greatness of their wisdom and virtue, would 
conspire to heighten their distress; and the 
world, instead of remaining the mansion of 
wisdom and happiness, become the scene of 
vice and confusion. Force and fraud must 
prevail, and mankind be reduced to the same 
calamitous condition as at present. 

“ Such a melancholy situation, in conse¬ 
quence merely of the want of provisions, is in 


truth more unnatural than all their present 
calamities. Supposing men to nave abused 
their liberty, by which abuse vice has once 
been introduced into the world; and tha* 
wrong notions, a bad taste, and vicious habits, 
have been strengthened by the defects of edu¬ 
cation and government, our present distresses 
may be easily explained. They may even 
be called natural, being the natural conse¬ 
quences of our depravity. They may be 
supposed to be the means by which Provi¬ 
dence punishes vice ; and by setting bounds 
to the increase of mankind, prevents the 
earth’s being overstocked, and men being laid 
under the cruel necessity of killing one an¬ 
other. But to suppose, that in the course of 
a favourable Providence a perfect govern¬ 
ment had been established, under which the 
disorders of human passions had been power¬ 
fully corrected and restrained; poverty, idle¬ 
ness and war banished; the earth made a para¬ 
dise; universal friendship and concord esta¬ 
blished, and human society rendered flourish¬ 
ing in all respects ; and that such a lovely con¬ 
stitution should be overturned, not by the vices 
of men, or their abuse of liberty, but by the 
order of nature itself, seems wholly unnatural, 
and altogether disagreeable to the methods of 
Providence.” 

To this passage, the gloomy theories of Mr. 
Malthus owe their origin. He took the evil 
which Wallace regarded as awaiting the 
species in its highest, state of earthly per¬ 
fection, as instant and pressing in almost 
every state of society, and as causing man¬ 
kind perpetually to oscillate. He represented 
nature herself as imposing an adamantine 
barrier to improvement. He depicted the 
tendency of the species to increase in num¬ 
bers, as arising from passion, mad and un¬ 
governable as well as universal, and as re¬ 
sisted, in its fatal consequences, only by war, 
famine, or disease. He maintained, that man 
was placed by nature between two tremen¬ 
dous evils, and could never recede from the 
strait within which his movements were con¬ 
tracted. 

The system thus promulgated in the first 
edition of the work on Population, could not 
be well applied to any practical uses. It 
tended to destroy the fair visions of human 
improvement, and to place a gigantic demon 
in their room. But it could not form a 
part of any rational scheme of legislation, 
because it represented the evils which it 
depicted as hopeless. Its only moral was de¬ 
spair. But its author—a man whose personal 
benevolence withstood his doctrines—became 
anxious to discover some moral purposes to 
which he might apply his scheme. Accord¬ 
ingly, in his second edition, which was so 
altered and rewritten as to be almost a new 
work, he introduced a new preventive check 
on the tendency of population to increase, 
which he designated “moral restraint,” and 
proposed to inculcate, by the negative course of 
leaving all those who did not practise it to the 
consequences of their error. This new fea¬ 
ture appears to us subversive of the whole sys¬ 
tem, in so far, at least, as it is designed to exhibit 
I insuperable obstacles to the progressive hap- 




75 


WALLACE’S PROSPECTS OF MANKIND, &c. 


piness of man. Instead of the evil being re¬ 
garded as inevitable, a means was expressly 
enforced by which it might be completely 
avoided. Celibacy was shown to be a state 
of attainable and exalted virtue. In calcu¬ 
lating on the tendency of the species to in¬ 
crease, we were no longer required to spec¬ 
ulate on a mere instinct, but on a thousand 
moral and intellectual causes—on the move¬ 
ments of reason, sensibility, imagination, and 
hope. The rainbow could be as easily grasped 
or a sun-beam measured by a line, as the ope¬ 
rations of the blended passion and sentiment 
of love estimated by geometrical series ! We 
will, however, examine a little more closely 
the popular objection to theories of human 
improvement, which the principle of popula¬ 
tion is supposed to offer. 

The real question, in this case, is not whe¬ 
ther, when the world is fully cultivated, the 
tendency of the species to increase will be 
greater than the means of subsistence; but 
whether this tendency really presses on us at 
every step of our progress. For, if there is no 
insuperable barrier to the complete cultivation 
of the earth, the cessation of all the countless 
evils of war, and the union of all the brethren 
of mankind in one great family, we may safely 
trust to Heaven for the rest. When this uni¬ 
versal harmony shall begin, men will surely 
have attained the virtue and the wisdom to ex¬ 
ercise a self-denial, which Mr. Mallhus himself 
represents as fully within their power. In the 
era of knowledge and of peace, that degree of 
self-sacrifice can scarcely be impossible, which, 
even now, our philosopher would inculcate at 
the peril of starvation. At least, there can be 
no danger in promoting the happiness of the 
species, until it shall arise to this fulness; for 
we are told, that every effort towards it pro¬ 
duces a similar peril with that which will em¬ 
bitter its final reign. And if it should exist at 
last, we may safely believe, that He who pro¬ 
nounced the blessing, “ increase and multiply,” 
will not abandon the work of his hands; but 
that this world then will have answered all the 
purposes of its creation, and that immortal 
state will begin, “in which we shall neither 
marry nor be given in marriage, but be as the 
angels of God.” 

Let us inquire, then, whether the evidence 
of history, or the present aspect of the world, 
warrant the belief, that the tendency of the 
species to increase beyond the means of sub¬ 
sistence is a necessary obstacle to the improve¬ 
ment of its condition. If the wretchedness of 
man really flowed from this source, it is strange 
that the discovery should not have been made 
during six thousand years of his misery. He is 
not usually thus obtuse, respecting the cause 
of his sorrows. It will be admitted, that his 
distresses have most frequently arisen from 
luxury and from war, as their immediate 
causes. The first will scarcely be attributed 
to the want of food; nor can the second be 
traced to so fantastical an origin. Shakspeare, 
indeed, represents Coriolanus, in his insolent 
contempt for humanity, as rejoicing in the ap¬ 
proach of war, as the means of “ venting the 
musty superfluity” of the people; but kings 
have not often engaged in the fearful game on 


so refined and philosophic principles. On the 
contrary, the strength of a state was always 
regarded, in old time, as consisting in the 
number of its citizens. And, indeed, it is im¬ 
possible that any of the gigantic evils of man¬ 
kind should have arisen from the pressure of 
population against the means of subsistence « 
because it is impossible to point out any one 
state in which the means of subsistence have 
been fully developed and exhausted. If the 
want of subsistence, then, has ever afflicted a 
people, it has not arisen, except in case of tem¬ 
porary famine, from a deficiency in the means of 
subsistence, but in the mode and spirit of using 
them. The fault has been not in nature, but 
in man. Population may, in a few instances, 
have increased beyond the energy of the peo¬ 
ple to provide for it, but not beyond the re¬ 
sources which God has placed within their 
power. 

The assertion, that there is, in the constant 
tendency of population to press hardly against 
the means of subsistence, an insuperable check 
to any great improvement of the species, is in 
direct contradiction to history. The species 
has increased in numbers, and has risen in in¬ 
telligence, under far more unfavourable cir¬ 
cumstances than the present, in spite of this 
fancied obstacle. There is no stage of civili¬ 
zation, in which the objection to any farther 
advance might not have been urged with as 
much plausibility as at the present. While 
any region, capable of fruitfulness, remains 
uninhabited and barren, the argument applies 
with no more force against its cultivation, than 
it would have applied against the desire of him 
who founded the first city to extend its boun¬ 
daries. While the world was before him, he 
might as reasonably have been warned to de¬ 
cline any plan for bringing wastes into tillage, 
on the ground that the tendency of man to mul¬ 
tiply would thus be incited beyond the means 
of supplying food, as we, in our time, while 
the greater part of the earth yet remains to be 
possessed. And, indeed, the objection has far 
less force now than at any preceding period: 
—because not only is space left, but the aids 
of human power are far greater than in old 
time. Machinery now enables one man to do 
as much towards the supply of human wants, 
as could formerly have been done by hundreds. 
And shall we select this as the period of so¬ 
ciety in which the species must stand still, be¬ 
cause the means of subsistence can be carried 
but a little farther I 

It seems impossible to cast a cursory glance 
over the earth, and retain the belief, that there 
is some insuperable obstacle in the constitution 
of nature, to the development of its vast and 
untried resources. Surely, immense regions 
of unbounded fertility—long successions of 
spicy groves—trackless pastures watered by 
ocean—rivers formed to let in wealth to the 
midst of a great continent—and islands which 
lie calmly on the breast of crystal seas, were 
not created for eternal solitude and silence. 
Until these are peopled, and the earth is 
indeed “ replenished and subdued,” the com¬ 
mand and the blessing, “increase and mul¬ 
tiply,” must continue unrecalled by its great 
Author. Shall not Egypt revive its old fruiU 





76 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


fulness, and Palestine again flow with milk and 
honey 1 

The hypothesis, that population left to itself 
will increase in a geometrical progression, 
while the means of subsistence can only be 
enlarged in an arithmetical progression, is a 
mere fantasy. Vegetables, cattle, and fish, 
have far greater powers of productiveness than 
the human species; and the only obstacle to 
those powers being developed in an equal de¬ 
gree, is the want of room for them to increase, 
or the want of energy or wisdom in man to 
apply the bounty of nature to its fittest uses. 
The first want cannot exist while the larger 
part of the earth is barren, and the riches of 
the ocean remain unexhausted. The second, 
with all the disadvantages of ignorance, war, 
tyranny, and vice, has not prevented the boun¬ 
daries of civilization from widely extending. 
What is there then in this particular stage of 
society, which should induce the belief, that 
the sinews of humanity are shrivelled up, and 
its energy falling to decay 1 The same quan¬ 
tity of food or of clothing—the same comforts 
and the same luxuries—which once required 
the labour of a hundred hands, are now pro¬ 
duced almost without personal exertion. And 
is the spirit in man so broken down and de¬ 
based, that, with all the aids of machinery, he 
cannot effect as much as the labour of his own 
right arm would achieve in the elder time 1 ? 
If, indeed, he is thus degenerate, the fault, at 
least, is not in nature, but in external and 
transitory causes. But we are prepared 
clearly, though briefly, to show, that man has 
been and is, on the whole, advancing in true 
virtue, and in moral and intellectual energy. 

It cannot be denied, that there are many ap¬ 
parent oscillations in the course of the species. 
If we look at only a small portion of history, 
it may seem retrograde, as a view of one of the 
windings of a noble river may lead us to 
imagine that ,it is flowing from the ocean. The 
intricacies of human affairs, the perpetual op¬ 
position of interests, prejudices, and passions, 
do not permit mankind to proceed in a right 
line; but, if we overlook any large series of 
ages, we shall clearly perceive, that the course 
of man is towards perfection. In contemplat¬ 
ing the past, our attention is naturally at¬ 
tracted to the illustrious nations, whose story 
is consecrated by our early studies. But even 
if we take these, and forget the savage barbar¬ 
ism of the rest of the world, we shall find little 
to excite our envy. Far be it from us to deny, 
that there were, among these, some men of 
pure and disinterested virtue, whose names 
are like great sea-marks in the dreariness of 
the perspective, and whom future generations 
can only desire to imitate. Our nature has al¬ 
ways had some to vindicate its high capabili¬ 
ties of good. But even among the privileged 
classes of Greece and Rome—the selected mi¬ 
nority, to whom all the rights of nature were 
confined more strictly than in the strictest 
modern despotism—how rare are the instances 
of real and genuine goodness ! The long suc¬ 
cession of bloody tragedies—that frightful al¬ 
ternation of cruelties and of meannesses—the 
Peloponnesian war, was perpetrated in the 
midst of the people, who had just carried the 


arts to their highest perfection. Gratitude, 
honesty, and good faith, had no place in the 
breast of Athenian citizens. The morals of 
the Spartans were even more despicable than 
those of their rivals. Their mixture of bar¬ 
barity and of craft towards their foes and the 
states which were tributary to their power— 
their unnatural sacrifice of the most sacred of 
the affections of nature to mere national glory 
—and their dreadful conduct towards the 
wretched Helots, who were their property,— 
have scarcely a parallel in human history. The 
long conspiracy of Rome against the liberties 
of mankind, carried on from the time of its 
foundation until it began to decline, served to 
string every sinew into a horrid rigidity, and 
to steel the heart to the feelings of compassion. 
This is the description of its progress by one 
of its own historians: 

“ Raptores orbis, postquam cuncta vastanti- 
bus defuere terrce, et mare scrutantur; si 
locuples hostis est, avari; si pauper, ambitiosi: 
quos non oriens non occidens satiaverit; soli 
omnium opes atque inopiam pari affectu con- 
cupiscunt. Auferre, trucidare, rapere, falsis 
nominibus imperium, atque ubi solitudinem 
pacem appellent.” (Tacitus, Vita AgricoLe, 
30.) 

The proscriptions of Marius and Sylla alone 
proved what this savage spirit could perpetrate 
at home, when it had exhausted all opportuni¬ 
ties of satiating, among foreign states, its 
thirst for slaughter. 

If we pass over the improvements in morals 
—the amelioration of war—the progress of po¬ 
litical science—and the redemption of the fe¬ 
male sex from degradation and from bondage 
—we shall find, in one great change alone, 
ample reason to rejoice in the advances of the 
species. The simple term, humanity, expresses 
the chief difference between our times and the 
brightest of classical ages. In those there was 
no feeling for man, as man—no recognition 
of a common brotherhood—no sense of those 
qualities which all men have in commqn, and 
of those claims which those who are “ made 
of one blood” have on each other F<>r justice 
and for mercy. Manhood was nothing, citizen¬ 
ship was all in all. Nearly all the virtues 
were aristocralical and exclusive. The num¬ 
ber of slaves—their dreadful condition—and 
the sanction which the law gave to all the 
cruelties practised on them—showed that the 
masters of the world had no sense of the dig¬ 
nity of their nature, whatever they might feel 
for the renown of their country, or the privi¬ 
leges their order. The Spartan youths mas¬ 
sacred their Helots, to nurture their valour. 
Indeed, the barbarities inflicted on that mise¬ 
rable race, by those whom we are sometimes 
taught to admire, would exceed belief, if they 
were not attested by the clearest proofs. At 
Rome, slaves, when too old for work, were 
often sent to an island in the Tiber, and left 
there to perish. On the slightest offence, they 
were frequently thrown into fish-ponds, ex¬ 
posed to wild beasts, or sentenced to die upon 
the cross. And in the same spirit of contempt 
for humanity, and veneration for the privileged 
orders, parents had power to imprison their 
children or put them to death, and wives were 



77 


WALLACE’S PROSPECTS OF MANKIND, &c. 


left, without protection, to the brutal ferocity 
of their husbands. 

With how different feelings are the rights of 
humanity regarded in these happier seasons ! 
Slavery is abolished throughout the Christian 
kingdoms of Europe, and, with few exceptions, 
equal justice is administered to all. There is 
no grief which does not meet with pity, and 
few miseries which do not excite the attempt 
to relieve them. Men are found of sensibili¬ 
ties keen even to agony, who, tremblingly alive 
in ever}'- fibre to wretchedness, have yet the 
moral heroism to steel their nerves to the in¬ 
vestigation of the most hideous details of suf¬ 
fering, with no desire of applause or wish for 
reward, except that which success itself will 
give them. Within a few short years, what 
great moral changes have been effected ! The 
traffic in human beings, which was practised 
without compunction or disgrace, and defended 
in parliament as a fair branch of commerce, 
is now made a felony, and those who are de¬ 
tected in pursuing it would almost be torn in 
pieces by popular fury. The most cruel 
enactments against freedom of thought and of 
discussion have been silently repealed, while 
scarcely a voice has been raised to defend or 
to mourn them. And, above all, a moral ele¬ 
vation has been given to the great mass of the 
rising generation, by the provision for their 
instruction, of which no time, or change, or 
accident can deprive them. 

There is a deep-rooted opinion, which has 
been eloquently propounded by some of the 
first critics of our age, that works of imagina¬ 
tion must necessarily decline as civilization 
advances. It will readily be conceded, that 
no individual minds can be expected to arise, 
in the most refined periods, which will surpass 
those which have been developed in rude and 
barbarous ages. But theru does not appear 
any solid reason for believing, that the mighty 
works of old time occupy the whole region of 
poetry—or necessarily chill the fancy of these 
later times by their vast and unbroken sha¬ 
dows. Genius does not depend on times or on 
seasons, it waits not on external circumstances, 
it can neither be subdued by the violence of the 
most savage means, nor polished away or dis¬ 
sipated among the refinements of the most glit¬ 
tering scenes of artificial life. It is “itself 
alone.” To the heart of a young poet, the 
world is ever beginning anew. He is in the 
generation by which he is surrounded, but he 
is not of it; he can live in the light of the 
holiest times, or range amidst gorgeous mar¬ 
vels of eldest superstition, or sit “ lone upon 
the shores of old romance,” or pierce the veil 
of mortality, and “breathe in worlds to which 
the heaven of heavens is but a veil.” The 
very deficiency of the romantic, in the actual 
paths of existence, will cause him to dwell in 
thought more apart from them, and to seek the 
wildest recesses in those regions which ima¬ 
gination opens to his inward gaze. To the 
eye of young joy, the earth is as fresh as at 
the first—the dew-drop is lit up as it was in 
Eden—and “ the splendour in the grass, the 
glory in the flower,” yet glitters as in the 
spring-time of the world. 

The subjects in which genius rejoices are 


not the vain and the transitory, but the true 
and the eternal, which are the same through 
all changes of society and shifting varieties 
of fashion. The heavens yet “tell the glory 
of God the hills, the vales, and the ocean, do 
not alter, nor does the heart of man wax old. 
The wonders of these are as exhaustless as 
they are lasting. While these remain, the cir¬ 
cumstances of busy life—the exact mechanism 
of the social state—will affect the true poet but 
little. The seeds of genius, which contain 
within themselves the germs of expanded 
beauties and divinest sublimities, cannot 
perish. Wheresoever they are scattered, they 
must take root, striking far below the surface, 
overcropped and exhausted by the multitude 
of transitory productions, into a deep richness 
of soil, and, rising up above the weeds and 
tangled underwood which would crush them, 
lift their innumerable boughs into the free and 
rejoicing heavens. 

The advancement of natural science and of 
moral truth do not tend really to lesson the 
j resources of the bard. The more we know, 
the more we feel there is yet to be known. 
The mysteries of nature and of humanity are 
not lessened, but increased, by the discoveries 
of philosophic skill. The lustre which breaks 
on the vast clouds, which encircle us in our 
earthly condition, does not merely set in clear 
vision that which before was hidden in sacred 
gloom; but, at the same time, half exhibits 
masses of magnificent shadow, unknown be¬ 
fore, and casts an uncertain light on vast re¬ 
gions, in which the imagination may devoutly 
expatiate. A plastic superstition may fill a 
lijnited circle with beautiful images, but it 
chills and confines the fancy, almost as strictly 
as it limits the reasoning faculties. The my¬ 
thology of Greece, for example, while it peo¬ 
pled earth with a thousand glorious shapes, 
shut out the free grace of nature from poetic 
vision, and excluded from the ken the high 
beatings of the soul. All the loveliness of 
creation, and all the qualities, feelings, and 
passions, were invested with personal attri¬ 
butes. The evening’s sigh was the breath of 
Zephyr—the streams were celebrated, not in 
their rural clearness, but as visionary nymphs 
—and ocean, that old agitator of sublimest 
thoughts, gave place, in the imagination, to a 
trident-bearing god. The tragic muse almost 
“ forgot herself to stone,” in her lone contem¬ 
plations of destiny. No wild excursiveness 
of fancy marked their lighter poems—no ma- 
jestical struggle of high passions and high 
actions filled the scene—no genial wisdom 
threw a penetrating, yet lovely, light on the 
silent recesses of the bosom. The diffusion of 
a purer faith restored to poetry its glowing af¬ 
fections, its far-searching intelligence, and its 
excursive power. And not only this, but it 
left it free to use those exquisite figures, and to 
avail itself of all the chaste and delicate 
imagery, which the exploded superstition first 
called into being. In the stately regions of 
imagination, the wonders of Greek fable yet 
have place, though they no longer hide from 
our view the secrets of our nature, or the long 
vistas which extend to the dim verge of the 
moral horizon. Well, indeed, does a grea 

b 2 







78 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


living poet assert their poetic existence, under 
the form of defending the science of the 
stars: 

“ For Fable is Love’s world, bis home, his birth-place ; 
Delightedly dwells he ’mong fays, and talismans, 

And spirits ; and delightedly believes 
Divinities, being himself divine. 

The intelligible forms of ancient poets, 

The fair humanities of old religion, 

The power, the beauty, and the majesty, 

That had their haunts in dale or piny mountain, 

Or forest, by slow stream or pebbly spring, 

Or chasms and watery depths ! all these have vanish’d; 
They live no longer in the faith of reason ; 

But still the heart doth need a language, still 
Doth the old instinct bring back the old names; 

And to yon starry world they now are gone, 

Spirits or gods, that used to share this earth 
With man as with their friend ; and to the lover 
Yonder they move, from yonder visible sky 
Shoot influence down ; and, even at this day 
'Tis Jupiter who brings whate’er is great, 

And Venus that brings every thing that’s fair !”* 

The poet is the inheritor of the imaginative 
treasures of all creeds which reason has now 
exploded. The dim gigantic shadows of the 
north—the gentle superstitions of the Greeks 
—the wild and wondrous prodigies of the Ara¬ 
bian enchantment—the dark rites of magic, 
more heart-stirring than all—have their places 
in the vast region of his soul. When we climb 
above the floating mists which have so long 
overspread humanity, to breathe a purer air, 
and gaze on the unclouded heavens, we do 
not lose our feeling of veneration for majestic 
errors, nor our sense of their glories. Instead 
of wandering in the region of cloud, we over¬ 
look it all, and behold its gorgeous varieties 
of arch, minaret, dome, or spire, without par¬ 
taking in its delusions. 

But we have no need of resort to argument, 
in order to show that genius is not gradually 
declining. A glance at its productions, in the 
present age, will suffice to prove the gloomy 
mistake of desponding criticism. We will 
sketch very lightly over the principal living 
authors, to illustrate this position—satisfied 
that the mere mention of their names will 
awaken, within our readers, recollections of 
delight, far more than sufficient triumphantly 
to contravene the theory of those who believe 
in the degeneracy of genius. 

And first—in the great walk of poesy—is 
Wordsworth, who, if he stood alone, would 
vindicate the immortality of his art. He has, 
in his works, built up a rock of defence for his 
species, which will resist the mightiest tides 
of demoralizing luxury. Setting aside the 
varied and majestic harmony of his verse—the 
freshness and the grandeur of his descriptions 
—the exquisite softness of his delineations of 
character—and the high and rapturous spirit 
of his choral songs—we may produce his “ di¬ 
vine philosophy” as unequalled by any pre¬ 
ceding bard. And surely it is no small proof 
of the infinity of the resources of genius, that 
in this late age of the world, the first of all phi¬ 
losophic poets should have arisen, to open a 
new vein of sentiment and thought, deeper and 
richer than yet had been laid bare to mortal 


• Coleridge’s translation of Schiller’s Wallenstein. 


eyes. His rural pictures are as fresh and as 
lively as those of Cowper, yet how much love¬ 
lier is the poetic light which is shed over them ? 
His exhibition of gentle peculiarities of cha¬ 
racter, and dear immunities of heart, is as true 
and as genial as that of Goldsmith, yet how 
much is its interest heightened by its intimate 
connection, as by golden chords, with the no¬ 
blest and most universal truths'? His little 
pieces of tranquil beauty are as holy and as 
sweet as those of Collins, and yet, while we feel 
the calm of the elder poet gliding into our souls, 
we catch farther glimpses through the luxu¬ 
riant boughs into “the highest heaven of in¬ 
vention.” His soul mantles as high with love 
and joy, as that of Burns, but yet “ how bright, 
how solemn, how serene,” is the brimming 
and lucid stream? His poetry not only dis¬ 
covers, within the heart, new faculties, but 
awakens within, its untried powers, to com¬ 
prehend and to enjoy its beauty and its wis¬ 
dom. 

Not less marvellously gifted, though in a 
far different manner, is Coleridge, who, by a 
strange error, has been usually regarded as 
belonging to the same school, partaking of the 
same peculiarities, and upholding the same 
doctrines. Instead, like Wordsworth, of seek¬ 
ing the sources of sublimity and of beauty in 
the simplest elements of humanity, he ranges 
through all history and science, investigating 
all that has really existed, and all that has 
had foundation only in the strangest and wild¬ 
est minds, combining, condensing, developing, 
and multiplying the rich products of his re¬ 
search with marvellous facility and skill; 
now pondering fondly over some piece of ex¬ 
quisite loveliness, brought from a wild and un¬ 
known recess; now tracing out the hidden 
germ of the eldest and most barbaric theories; 
and now calling fantastic spirits from the 
vasty deep, where they have slept since the 
dawn of reason. The term, “ myriad-minded,” 
which he has happily applied to Shakspeare, 
is truly descriptive of himself. He is notone, 
but Legion—“ rich with the spoils of time,” 
richer in his own glorious imagination and 
sportive fantasy. There is nothing more won¬ 
derful than the facile majesty of his images, or 
rather of his worlds of imagery, which, even 
in his poetry or his prose, start up before us 
self-raised and all perfect, like the palace of 
Aladdin. He ascends to the sublimest truths, 
by a winding track of sparkling glory, which 
can only be described in his own language— 

“ the spirits’ ladder, 

That from this gross and visible world of dust 
Even to the starry world, with thousand rounds 
Builds itself up; on which the unseen powers 
Move up and down on heavenly ministries— 

The circles in the circles, that approach 
The central sun with ever-narrowing orbit.'* 

In various beauty of versification, he has 
never been exceeded. Shakspeare, doubtless, 
has surpassed him in linked sweetness and ex¬ 
quisite continuity, and Milton in pure majesty 
and classic grace—but this is in one species 
of verse only—and, taking all his trials of va¬ 
rious metres, the swelling harmony of his blank 
verse, the sweet breathing of his gentler odes, 






WALLACE’S PROSPECTS OF MANKIND, &c. 


79 


and the sybil-like flutter alternate with the mur¬ 
muring charm of his wizard spells, we doubt 
if even these great masters have so fully de¬ 
veloped the music of the English tongue. He 
has yet completed no adequate memorials of 
his genius; yet it is most unjust to assert,that 
he has done nothing or little. To refute this 
assertion, there are, his noble translation of 
Wallenstein —his love-poems of intensest beauty 
—his Ancient Mariner, with its touches of pro- 
foundest tenderness amidst the wildest and 
most bewildering terrors—his holy and most 
sweet tale of Christabel, with its rich enchant¬ 
ments and its richer humanities—the depths, 
the sublimities, and the pensive sweetness of 
his tragedy—the heart-dilating sentiments scat¬ 
tered through his “ Friend ”—and the stately 
imagery which breaks upon us at every turn 
of the golden paths of his metaphysical laby¬ 
rinths. And, if he has a power within mightier 
than that which even these glorious creations 
indicate, shall he be censured because he has 
deviated from the ordinary course of the age, 
in its development; and, instead of committing 
his imaginative wisdom to the press, has deli¬ 
vered it from his living lips I He has gone about 
in the true spirit of an old Creek bard, with 
a noble carelessness of self, giving fit utterance 
to the divine spirit within him. Who that has 
heard can ever forget him—his mild benignity 
—the unbounded variety of his knowledge—the 
fast succeeding products of his imagination— 
the child-like simplicity with which he rises, 
from the driest and commonest theme,into the 
widest magnificence of thought, pouring on 
the soul a stream of beauty and of wisdom, to 
mellow and enrich it for ever I The seeds of 
poetry, which he has thus scattered, will not 
perish. The records of his fame are not in 
books only, but on the fleshly tablets of young 
hearts, who will not suffer it to die even in the 
general ear, however base and unfeeling criti¬ 
cism may deride their gratitude! 

Charles Lamb is as original as either of 
these, within the smaller circle which he has 
chosen. We know not of any writer, living 
or dead, to whom we can fitly liken him. The 
exceeding delicacy of his fancy, the keenness 
of his perceptions of truth and beauty, the 
sweetness and the wisdom of his humour, and 
the fine interchange and sportive combination 
of all these, so frequent in his works, are en¬ 
tirely and peculiarly his own. As it has been 
said of Swift, that his better genius was his 
spleen, it may be asserted of Lamb that his 
kindliness is his inspiration. With how nice 
an eye does he detect the least hitherto un¬ 
noticed indication of goodness, and with how 
true and gentle a touch does he bring it out to 
do good to our natures! How new and strange 
do some of his more fantastical ebullitions 
seem, yet how invariably do they come home 
to the very core, and smile at the heart! He 
makes the majesties of imagination seem fa¬ 
miliar, and gives to familiar things a pathetic 
beauty or a venerable air. Instead of finding 
that every thing in his writings is made the 
most of, we always feel that the tide of senti¬ 
ment and of thought is pent in, and that the 
airy and variegated bubbles spring up from 
a far depth in the placid waters. The loveli¬ 


ness of his thought looks, in the quaintness of 
his style, like a modest beauty, laced-in and 
attired in a dress of the superb fashion of the 
elder time. His versification is not greatly in¬ 
ferior to that of Coleridge, and it is, in all its 
best qualities, unlike that of any other poet. 
His heroic couplets are alternately sweet, terse, 
and majestical; and his octo-syllabic measures 
have a freeness and completeness, which mark 
them the pure Ionic of verse. 

Barry Cornwall, with the exception of Cole¬ 
ridge, is the most genuine poet of love, who 
has, for a long period, appeared among us. 
There is an intense and passionate beauty, a 
depth of affection, in his little dramatic poems, 
which appear even in the affectionate triflings 
of his gentle characters. He illustrates that 
holiest of human emotions, which, while it 
will twine itself with the frailest twig, or dally 
with the most evanescent shadow of creation, 
wasting its excess of kindliness on all around 
it, is yet able to “ look on tempests and be 
never shaken.” Love is gently omnipotent in 
his poems; accident and death itself are but 
passing clouds, which scarcely vex and which 
cannot harm it. The lover seems to breathe 
out his life in the arms of his mistress, as 
calmly as the infant sinks into its softest slum¬ 
ber. The fair blossoms of his genius, though 
light and trembling at the breeze, spring from 
a wide, and deep, and robust stock, which will 
sustain far taller branches without being ex¬ 
hausted. In the vision, where he sees “ the 
famous Babylon,” in his exquisite sonnets, and 
yet more in his Marcian Colonna, has he shown 
a feeling and a power for the elder venerable¬ 
ness of the poetic art, which, we are well as¬ 
sured, he is destined successfully to develope. 

Some of our readers will, perhaps, wonder, 
that we have thus long delayed the mention 
of the most popular of the living poets. But, 
though we have no desire to pass them by, 
we must confess, that we do not rest chiefly 
on them our good hope for English genius. 
Lord Byron’s fame has arisen, we suspect, al¬ 
most as much from an instinctive awe of his 
nobility, and from a curiosity to know the se¬ 
crets of his diseased soul which he so often par¬ 
tially gratifies, as from the strength and turbid 
majesty of his productions. His mind is, 
however, doubtless cast in no ordinary mould. 
His chief poetic attributes appear, to us, to be 
an exceedingly quick sensibility to external 
beauty and grandeur, a capability and a love 
of violent emotion, and a singular mastery of 
language. He has no power over himself, 
which is the highest of all qualifications for a 
poet as it is for a man. He has no calm me¬ 
ditative greatness, no harmonizing spirit, no 
pure sense of love and of joy. He is as far be¬ 
neath the calmy imaginative poets as the re¬ 
gion of tempests and storms is below the quiet 
and unclouded heavens. He excites intense 
feeling, by leading his readers to the brink of 
unimaginable horror, by dark hints of name¬ 
less sins, or by the strange union of virtues and 
of vices, which God and nature have for ever 
divided. Yet are there touches of grace and 
beauty scattered throughout his works, occa¬ 
sional bursts of redeeming enthusiasm, which 
make us deeply regret the too-often “admired 






60 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


disorder” of his soul. The stream of his ge¬ 
nius falls, from a vast height, amidst bleakest 
rocks, into depths, which mortal e 3 r e cannot 
fathom, and into which it is dangerous to gaze ; 
but it sends up a radiant mist in its fall, which 
the sun tints with heavenly colouring, and it 
leaves its echoes on the golden and quiet 
clouds! The too frequent perversion of his 
genius does not prevent it from showing, in 
its degree, the immortality of the most sublime 
of the human faculties. 

Sir Walter Scott, if his poetry is not all 
wh'ich his countrymen proclaim it, is a bard, 
in whose success every good man must rejoice. 
His feeling of nature is true, if it is not pro¬ 
found ; his humanity is pure, if it is not deep ; 
his knowledge of facts is choice and various, 
if his insight into their philosophy is not very 
clear or extensive. Dr. Percy’s Reliqucs pre¬ 
pared his way, and the unpublished Christabel 
aided his inspirations; but he is entitled to 
the credit of having first brought romantic 
poetry into fashion. Instead of the w'retched 
sentimentalities of the Della Cruscan school, 
he supplied the public with pictures of nature, 
and with fair visions of chivalry. If he is, 
and we hope as well as believe that he is, the 
author of the marvellous succession of Scotch 
romances, he deserves far deeper sentiments 
of gratitude than those which his poems 
awaken. Then does he merit the praise of 
having sent the mountain breezes into the 
heart of this great nation; of having supplied 
us all with a glorious crowd of acquaintances, 
and even of friends, whose society will never 
disturb or weary us ; and of having made us 
glow a thousand times with honest pride, in 
that nature of which we are partakers ! 

Mr. Southey is an original poet, and a de¬ 
lightful prose-writer, though he does not even 
belong to the class which it has been the 
fashion to represent him as redeeming. He 
has neither the intensity of Wordsworth, nor 
the glorious expansion of Coleridge ; but he 
has their holiness of imagination, and child¬ 
like purity of thought. His fancies are often 
as sweet and as heavenly as those which 
“may make a crysome child to smile.” There 
is, too, sometimes an infantine love of glitter 
and pomp, and of airy castle-building, dis¬ 
played in his more fantastical writings. The 
great defect of his purest and loftiest poems 
is, that they are not imbued with humanity; 
they do not seem to have their only home on 
“ this dear spot, this human earth of ours,” but 
their scenes might be transferred, perhaps with 
advantage, to the moon or one of the planets. 
In the loneliest bower which poesy can rear, 
deep in a trackless wild, or in some island, 
placed “far amid the melancholy main,” the 
air of this wqrld must yet be allowed to breathe, 
if the poet Would interest “ us poor humans.” 
It may heighten even the daintiest solitude of 
blessed lovers, 

“ All the while to feel and know, 

That they are in a world of wo, 

On such an earth as this.” 

Mr. Southey’s poems are beautiful and pure, 
jret too far from our common emotions. His 
Joan of Arc , his Thalaba, and his Roderick , are 


full of the stateliest pictures But his Kehama 
is his greatest work—the most marvellous suc¬ 
cession of fantasies, “sky tinctured,” ever 
called into being, without the aid of real and 
hearty faith! Mr. Southey’s prose style is 
singularly lucid and simple. His life of Nel¬ 
son is a truly British work, giving the real 
heartiness of naval strength of our country, with¬ 
out ostentation or cant; his memoir of Kirke 
White is very unaffected and pathetic; and his 
Essays on the State of the Poor, really touching 
in their benevolence, and their well-regulated 
sympathies. Of the violences of his more deci¬ 
dedly political effusions, we shall not here ven¬ 
ture to give an opinion ; except to express our 
firm belief, that they have never been influenced 
by motives unworthy of a man of genius. 

Mr. Campbell has not done much which is 
excellent in poetry, but that which he has writ¬ 
ten well is admirable in its kind. His battle- 
odes are simple, affecting, and sublime.—Few 
passages can exceed the dying speech of Ger¬ 
trude, in sweet pathos, or the war-song of old 
Outalissi, in stern and ferocious grandeur. It is 
astonishing, that he, who could produce these 
and other pieces of most genuine poetry, should, 
on some occasions, egregiously mistake gaudy 
words for imagination : and heap up fragments 
of bad metaphors, as though he could scale 
the “ highest heaven of invention,” by the ac¬ 
cumulation of mere earthly materials. 

It is the singular lot of Moore, to seem, in his 
smaller pieces, as though he were fitted for 
the highest walk of poetry; and in his more 
ambitious efforts, to appear as though he could 
fabricate nothing but glittering tinsel. The 
truth is, however, that those of his attempts, 
which the world thinks the boldest, and in 
which we regard him as unsuccessful, are not 
above, but beneath his powers. A thousand 
tales of veiled prophets, who wed ladies in the 
abodes of the dead, and frighten their associates 
to death by their maimed and mangled coun¬ 
tenances, may be produced with far less ex¬ 
pense of true imagination, fancy, or feeling, 
than one sweet song, which shall seem the 
very echo “of summer days and deligh. r ul 
years.” Moore is not fit for the composite n 
of tales of demon frenzy and feverish strengn, 
only because his genius is of too pure and 
noble an essence. He is the most sparkling 
and graceful of triflers. It signifies little, 
whether the Fives Court or the Palace furnish 
him with materials. However repulsive the 
subject, he can “ turn all to favour, and to pret¬ 
tiness.” Clay and gold, subjected to his easy 
inimitable hand, are wrought into shapes, so 
pleasingly fantastic, that the difference of the 
subject is lost in the fineness of the workman¬ 
ship. His lighter pieces are distinguished at 
once by deep feeling, and a gay festive air, 
which he never entirely loses. He leads wit, 
sentiment, patriotism, and fancy, in a gay fan¬ 
tastic round, gambols sportively with fate, and 
holds a dazzling fence with care and with sor¬ 
row. He has seized all the “snatches of old 
tunes,” which yet lingered about the wildest 
regions of his wild and fanciful country; and 
has fitted to them words of accordance, the 
most exquisite. There is a luxury in his grief, 
and a sweet melancholy in his joy, which are 





81 


WALLACE’S PROSPECTS OF MANKIND, &c. 


old and well remembered in our experience, 
though scarcely ever before thus nicely re¬ 
vived in poetry. 

The works of Crabbe are full of good sense, 
condensed thought, and lively picture ; yet the 
greater part of them is almost the converse of 
poetry. The mirror which he holds up to 
nature, is not that of imagination, which soft¬ 
ens down the asperities of actual existences, 
brings out the stately and the beautiful, while 
it leaves the trivial and the low in shadow, and 
sets all things which it reflects in harmony 
before us : on the contrary, it exhibits the de¬ 
tails of the coarsest and most unpleasing reali¬ 
ties, with microscopic accuracy and minute¬ 
ness. Some of his subjects are, in themselves, 
worthless—others are absolutely revolting— 
yet it is impossible to avoid admiring the 
strange nicety of touch with which he has 
felt their discordances, and the ingenuity with 
which he has painted them. His likenesses ab¬ 
solutely startle us.—There are cases in which 
this intense consciousness of little circum¬ 
stances is prompted by deep passion; and, 
whenever Mr. Crabbe seizes one of these, his 
extreme minuteness rivets and enchants us. 
The effect of this vivid picturing in one of his 
tales, where a husband relates to his wife the 
story of her own intrigue before marriage, as 
a tale of another, is thrilling and grand. , In 
some of his poems, as his Sir Eustace Grey and 
the Gipsy-woman's Confession, he has shown that 
he can wield the mightiest passions with ease, 
when he chooses to rise from the contempla¬ 
tion of the individual to that of the universal; 
from the delineation of men and things, to that 
of man and the universe. 

We dissent from many of Leigh Hunt’s prin¬ 
ciples of morality and of taste ; but we cannot 
suffer any difference of opinion to prevent the 
avowal of our deep sense of his poetical genius. 
He is a poet of various and sparkly fancy, of 
real affectionate heartiness, and of pathos as 
deep and pure as that of any living writer. He 
unites an English homeliness, with the richest 
Italian luxury. The story of Rimini is one of 
the most touching, which we have ever re¬ 
ceived into our “ heart of hearts.” The crisp¬ 
ness of the descriptive passages, the fine spirit 
of gallantry in the chivalrous delineations, 
the exquisite gradations of the fatal affection 
and the mild heart-breaking remorse of the 
heroine, form, altogether, a body of sweetly- 
bitler recollections, for which none but the 
most heartless of critics would be unthankful. 
The fidelity and spirit of his little translations 
are surprising. Nor must we forget his prose 
works;—the wonderful power, with which he 
has for many years sent forth weekly essays, 
of great originality, both of substance and ex¬ 
pression ; and which seem now as fresh and 
unexhausted as ever. We have nothing here 
to do with his religion or his politics;—but, it 
is impossible to help admiring the healthful 
impulses, which he has so long been breathing 
«into the torpid breast of daily life;” or the 
plain and manly energy, with which he has 
shaken the selfism of the age, and sent the 
claims of the wretched in full and resistless 
force to the bosoms of the proud, or the thought¬ 
less. In some of his productions—especially 
11 


in several numbers of the Indicator —he has re¬ 
vived some of those lost parts of our old ex¬ 
perience, which we had else wholly forgotten ; 
and has given a fresh sacredness to our daily 
walks and ordinary habits. We do not see 
any occasion in this for terms of reproach or 
ridicule. The scenery around London is not 
the finest in the world ; but it is all which an 
immense multitude can see of nature, and 
surely it is no less worthy an aim to hallow a 
spot which thousands may visit, than to ex¬ 
patiate on the charms of some dainty solitude, 
which can be enjoyed only by an occasional 
traveller. 

There are other living poets, some of them 
of great excellence, on whose merits we should 
be happy to dwell, but that time and space 
would fail us. We might expatiate on the 
heaven-breathing pensiveness of Montgomery 
—on the elegant reminiscences of Rogers—on 
the gentle eccentricity of Wilson—on the lux¬ 
urious melancholy of Bowles—or on the soft 
beauties of the Ettrick Shepherd. The works of 
Lloyd are rich in materials of reflection—most 
intense, yet most gentle—most melancholy, 
yet most full of kindness—most original in 
philosophic thought, yet most calm and be¬ 
nignant towards the errors of-the world. Rey¬ 
nolds has given delightful indications of a free, 
and happy, and bounteous spirit, fit to sing of 
merry out-laws and green-wood revelries, 
which we trust he will suffer to refresh us 
with its blithe carollings. Keats, whose Endy- 
mion was so cruelly treated by the critics, has 
just put forth a volume of poems which must 
effectually silence his deriders. The rich ro¬ 
mance of his Lamia —the holy beauty of his 
St. Jlgnes’ Eve —the pure and simple diction and 
intense feeling of his Isabella —and the rough 
sublimity of his Hyperion —cannot be laughed 
down, though all the periodical critics in Eng¬ 
land and Scotland were to assail them with 
their sneers. Shelley, too, notwithstanding the 
odious subject of his last tragedy, evinced in 
that strange work a real human power, of which 
there is little trace among the old allegories and 
metaphysical splendours of his earlier produc¬ 
tions. No one can fail to perceive, that there are 
mighty elements in his genius, although there is 
a melancholy want of a presiding power—a 
central harmony—in his soul. Indeed, rich as 
the present age is in poetry, it is even richer iii 
promise. There are many minds—among 
which we may, particularly, mention that of 
Maturin—which are yet disturbed even by the 
number of their own incomplete perceptions. 
These, however, will doubtless fulfil their glo¬ 
rious destiny, as their imaginations settle into 
that calm lucidness, which in the instance of 
Keats has so rapidly succeeded to turbid and 
impetuous confusion. 

The dramatic literature of the present age 
does not hold a rank proportioned to its poetical 
genius. But our tragedy, at least, is superior 
to any which has been produced since the rich 
period of Elizabeth and of James. Though 
the dramatic works of Shiel, Maturin, Cole 
ridge, and Milman, are not so grand, and har 
monious, and impressive, as the talent of their 
authors would lead us to desire, they are far 
superior to the tragedies of Hill, Southern 



82 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


Murphy, Johnson, Philipps, Thomson, Young, 
Addison, or Rowe. Otway’s Venice Preserved 
alone—and that only in the structure of its 
plot—is superior to the Remorse, to Bertram, 
Fazio, or Evadne. And then—more pure, more 
dramatic, more gentle, than all these, is the 
tragedy of Virginias —a piece of simple yet 
beautiful humanity—in which the most exqui¬ 
site succession of classic groups is animated 
with young life and connected by the finest 
links of interest—and the sweetest of Roman 
stories lives before us at once, new and fami¬ 
liar to our bosoms. 

We shall not be suspected of any undue 
partiality towards modern criticism. But its 
talent shows, perhaps, more decidedly than 
any thing else, the great start which the human 
mind has taken of late years. Throughout 
all the periodical works extant, from the Edin¬ 
burgh Review down to the lowest of the maga¬ 
zines, striking indications may be perceived 
of “ that something far more deeply interfused,” 
which is now working in the literature of 
England. We not rarely see criticisms on 
theatrical performances of the preceding even¬ 
ing in the daily newspapers, which would put 
to shame the elaborate observations of Dr. 
Johnson on Shakspeare. Mr. Hazlitt—incom¬ 
parably the most original of the regular cri¬ 
tics—has almost raised criticism into an inde¬ 
pendent art, and, while analyzing the merits 
of others, has disclosed stores of sentiment, 
thought, and fancy, which are his own peculiar 
property. His relish for the excellencies of 
those whom he eulogizes is so keen, that, in 
his delineations, the pleasures of intellect be¬ 
come almost as vivid and substantial as those 
of sense. He introduces us into the very pre¬ 
sence of the great of old time, and enables us 
almost to imagine that w r e hear them utter the 
living words of beauty and wisdom. He makes 
us companions of their happiest hours, and 
share not only in the pleasures which they 
diffused, but in those which they tasted. He 
discloses to us the hidden soul of beauty, not 
like an anatomist but like a lover. His criti¬ 
cisms, instead of breaking the sweetest en¬ 
chantments of life, prolongs them, and teaches 
an to love poetic excellence more intensely, as 
well as more wisely. 

The present age is, also, honourably distin¬ 
guished by the variety and the excellence of 
productions from the pen of women. In poetry 
—there is the deep passion, richly tinged with 
fancy, of Baillie—the delicate romance of Mil¬ 
ford—the gentle beauty and feminine chivalry 
of Beetham—and the classic elegance of He- 
mans. There is a greater abundance of female 
talent among the novelists. The exquisite sar¬ 
casm of humour of Madame D’Arblay—the 


soft and romantic charm of the novels of the 
Porters—the brilliant ease and admirable good 
sense of Edgeworth—the intense humanity 
of Inchbald—the profound insight into the 
fearful depths of the soul with which the au¬ 
thor of Glenarvon is gifted—the heart-rending 
pathos of Opie—and the gentle wisdom, the 
holy sympathy with the holiest childhood, and 
the sweet imaginings, of the author of Mrs. 
LeicesteVs School —soften and brighten the lite¬ 
rary aspect of the age. These indications of 
female talent are not only delightful in them¬ 
selves, but inestimable as proofs of the rich 
intellectual treasures which are diffused 
throughout the sex, to whom the next genera¬ 
tion will owe their first and their most sacred 
impressions. 

But, after all, the best intellectual sign of the 
present times is the general education of the 
poor. This ensures duration to the principles 
of good, by whatever political changes the 
frame of society may be shaken. The sense 
of human rights and of human duties is not 
now confined to a few, and, therefore, liable to 
be lost, but is stamped in living characters on 
millions of hearts. And the foundations of 
human improvement thus secured, it has a 
tendency to advance in a true geometrical pro¬ 
gression. Meanwhile, the effects of the spirit 
of improvement which have long been silently 
preparing in different portions of the globe, 
are becoming brilliantly manifest. The vast 
continent of South America, whether it con¬ 
tinue nominally dependent on European states, 
or retain its own newly-asserted freedom, will 
teem with new intellect, enterprise, and energy. 
Old Spain, long sunk into the most abject de¬ 
gradation, has suddenly awakened, as if re¬ 
freshed from slumber, and her old genius must 
revive with her old dignities. A bloodless 
revolution has just given liberty to Naples, 
and thus has opened the way for the restora¬ 
tion of Italy. That beautiful region again will 
soon inspire her bards with richer strains than 
of yore, and diffuse throughout the world a 
purer luxury. Amidst these quickenings of 
humanity, individual poets, indeed, must lose 
that personal importance which in darker pe¬ 
riods would be their portion. All selfism—all 
predominant desire for the building up of indi¬ 
vidual fame—must give way to the earnest 
and simple wish to share in, and promote, the 
general progress of the species. He is un¬ 
worthy of the name of a great poet, who is 
not contented that the loveliest of his imagina¬ 
tions should be lost in the general light, or 
viewed only as the soft and delicate streaks 
which shall usher in that glorious dawn, which 
is, we believe, about to rise on the world, and 
to set no more» 



ON PULPIT ORATORY. 


89 


ON PULPIT ORATORY. 

WITH REMARKS ON THE REV. ROBERT HALL. 

[London Magazine.] 


The decline of eloquence in the Senate and 
at the Bar is no matter of surprise. In the 
freshness of its youth, it was the only medium 
by which the knowledge and energy of a single 
heart could be communicated to thousands. 
It supplied the place, not only of the press, but 
of that general communication between the 
different classes of the state, which the inter¬ 
courses of modern society supply. Then the 
passions of men, unchilled by the frigid cus¬ 
toms of later days, left them open to be in¬ 
flamed or enraptured by the bursts of enthu¬ 
siasm, which would now be met only with 
scorn. In our courts of law occasions rarely 
arise for animated addresses to the heart; and 
even when these occur, the barrister is fettered 
by technical rules, and yet more by the techni¬ 
cal habits and feelings, of those by whom he 
is encircled. A comparatively small degree 
of fancy, and a glow of social feeling, directed 
by a tact which will enable a man to proceed 
with a constant appearance of directing his 
course within legal confines, are now the best 
qualifications of a forensic orator. They were 
exhibited by Lord Erskine in the highest per¬ 
fection, and attended with the most splendid 
success. Had he been greater tlian he was, 
he had been nothing. He ever seemed to 
cherish an affection for the technicalities of 
his art, which won the confidence of his duller 
associates. He appeared to lean on these as 
his stays and resting-places, even when he 
ventured to look into the depth of human na¬ 
ture, or to catch a momentary glimpse of the 
regions of fantasy. When these were taken 
from him, his powers fascinated no longer. 
He was exactly adapted to the sphere of a 
court of law—above his fellows, but not be¬ 
yond their gage—and giving to the forms 
which he could not forsake, an air of venera- 
bieness and grandeur. Any thing more full 
of beauty and wisdom than his speeches, 
would be heard only with cold and bitter scorn 
in an English court of justice. In the houses 
of parliament, mightier questions are debated; 
but no speaker hopes to influence the decision. 
Indeed the members of opposition scarcely pre¬ 
tend to struggle against the “ dead eloquence of 
votes,” but speak with a view to an influence on 
the public mind, which is a remote and chilling 
aim. Were it otherwise, the academic educa¬ 
tion of the members—the prevalent disposition 
to ridicule, rather than to admire—and the 
sensitiveness which resents a burst of enthu¬ 
siasm as an offence against the decorum of 
polished society—would effectually repress any 
attempt to display an eloquence in which in¬ 
tense passion should impel the imagination, 
and noble sentiment should be steeped in 
fancy. The orations delivered on charitable 
occasions,-—consisting, with few exceptions, 


of poor conceits, miserable compliments, and 
hackneyed metaphors,—are scarcely worthy 
of a transient allusion. 

But the causes which have opposed the ex¬ 
cellence of pulpit oratory in modern times 
are not so obvious. Its subjects have never 
varied, from the day when the Holy Spirit 
visibly descended on the first advocates of the 
gospel, in tongues of fire. They are in no 
danger of being exhausted by frequency, or 
changed with the vicissitudes of mortal for¬ 
tune. They have immediate relation to that 
eternity, the idea of which is the living soul of 
all poetry and art. It is the province of the 
preachers of Christianity to develope the con¬ 
nection between this world and the next—to 
watch over the beginnings of a course which 
will endure for ever—and to trace the broad 
shadows cast from imperishable realities on the 
shifting scenery of earth. This sublunary 
sphere does not seem to them as trifling or 
mean, in proportion as they extend their views 
onward; but assumes a new grandeur and 
sanctity, as the vestibule of a statelier and an 
eternal region. The mysteries of our being— 
life and death—both in their strange essences, 
and in their sublimer relations, are topics of 
their ministry. There is nothing affecting in 
the human condition, nothing majestic in the 
affections, nothing touching in the instability 
of human dignities,—the fragility of loveli¬ 
ness,—or the heroism of self-sacrifice—which 
is not a theme suited to their high purposes. 
It is theirs to dwell on the eldest history of the 
world—on the beautiful simplicities of the pa¬ 
triarchal age—on the stern and awful religion, 
and marvellous story of the Hebrews—on the 
glorious visions of the prophets, and their fulfil¬ 
ment—on the character, miracles, and death 
of the Saviour—on all the wonders, and all the 
beauty of the Scriptures. It is theirs to trace 
the spirit of the boundless and the eternal, 
faintly breathing in every part of the mystic 
circle of superstition, unquenched even amidst 
the most barbarous rites of savage tribes, and 
all the cold anfl beautiful shapes of Grecian 
mould. The inward soul of every religious 
system—the philosophical spirit of all history— 
the deep secrets of the human heart, when 
grandest or most wayward—are theirs to 
search and to develope. Even those specula¬ 
tions which do not immediately affect man’s 
conduct and his hopes are theirs, with all their 
high casuistry; for in these, at least, they dis¬ 
cern the beatings of the soul against the bars 
of its earthly tabernacle, which prove the im¬ 
mortality of its essence, and its des'iny to 
move in freedom through the vast ethereal cir¬ 
cle to which it thus vainly aspires. In all the 
intensities of feeling, and all the regalities of 
imagination, they may find fitting materials for 




84 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


their passionate expostulations with their fel¬ 
low men to turn their hearts to those objects 
which will endure for ever. 

It appears, therefore, at first observation, 
strange, that in this country, where an irreli¬ 
gious spirit has never become general, the ora¬ 
tory of the pulpit has made so little progress. 
The ministers of the Established Church have 
not, on the whole, fulfilled the promise given 
in the days of its early zeal. The noble en¬ 
thusiasm of Hooker—the pregnant wit of 
South—the genial and tolerant warmth of 
Tillotson—the vast power of reasoning and ob¬ 
servation of Barrow—have rarely been copied, 
even feebly, by their successors. Jeremy Tay¬ 
lor stands altogether alone among churchmen. 
Who has ever manifested any portion of that 
exquisite intermixture of a yearning love with 
a heavenly fancy, which enabled him to em¬ 
body and render palpable the holy charities of 
his religion in the loveliest and most delicate 
images'? Who has ever so encrusted his sub¬ 
jects with candied words ; or has seemed, like 
him, to take away the sting of death with “ rich 
conceit;” or has, like him, half persuaded his 
hearers to believe that they heard the voice of 
pitying angels ? Few, indeed, of the ministers 
of the church have been endued with the di¬ 
vine imagination which might combine, en¬ 
large, and vivify the objects of sense, so as, 
by stately pictures, to present us with symbols 
of that uncreated beauty and grandeur in 
which hereafter we shall expatiate. The most 
celebrated of them have been little more than 
students of vast learning and research, unless, 
•with Warburton and Horseley, they have 
aspired at once boldly to speculate, and impe¬ 
riously to dogmatize. 

It cannot be doubted, that the species of pa¬ 
tronage, by which the honours and emoluments 
of the establishment are distributed, has tended 
to prevent the development of genius within 
its pale. But, perhaps, we may find a more 
adequate cause for the low state of its preach¬ 
ing in the very beauty and impressiveness of 
its rites and appointed services. The tendency 
of religious ceremonies, of the recuiwence of 
old festivals, and of a solemn and dignified 
form of worship, is, doubtless, to keep alive 
tender associations in the heart, and to pre¬ 
serve the llame of devotion steady and pure, 
but not to incite men to look abroad into their 
nature, or to prompt any lofty excursions of 
religious fancy. There have, doubtless, been 
eloquent preachers in the church of Rome,— 
because in her communion Hhe ceremonies 
themselves are august and fearful, and because 
her proselyting zeal inspired her sons with 
peculiar energy. But episcopacy in England 
is by far the most tolerant of systems ever 
associated with worldly power. Its ministers, 
until the claim of some of them, to the exclu¬ 
sive title of evangelical, created dissensions, 
breathed almost uniformly a spirit of mildness 
and peace. Within its sacred boundaries, all 
was order, repose, and charity. Its rights and 
observances were the helps and leaning-places 
of the soul, on which it delighted to rest amidst 
the vicissitudes of the world, and in its ap¬ 
proach to its final change. The fulness, the 
majesty, and the dignified benignities of the 


Liturgy sunk deep into the heart, and pre¬ 
vented the devout worshipper from feeling the 
want of strength or variety in the discourses 
of the preacher. The church-yard, with its 
gentle risings, and pensive memorials of affec¬ 
tion, was a silent teacher, both of vigilance 
and love. And the village spire, whose “si¬ 
lent finger points to heaven,” has supplied the 
place of loftiest imaginings of celestial glory. 

Obstacles of a far different kind long pre¬ 
vented the advancement of pulpit eloquence 
among the Protestant Dissenters. The minis¬ 
ters first ejected for non-conformity were men 
of rigid honesty and virtue,—but their intel¬ 
lectual sphere was little extended beyond that 
of their fellows. There cannot be a greater 
mistake than to suppose that they sacrificed 
their worldly interest from any regard to the 
principles of free inquiry, which have since 
almost become axioms. They believed that 
their compliance with the requisitions of the 
monarch would be offensive to God, and that 
in refusing to yield it they were doing his will; 
but they were prepared in their turn to assume 
the right of interpreting the Bible for others, 
and of condemning them for a more extended 
application of their example. Harassed, ridi¬ 
culed, and afflicted, they naturally contracted 
an air of rigidity, and refused, in their turn, 
with horror, an extensive sympathy with the 
world. The controversies in which the learned 
men among the Dissenters were long occupied, 
having respect, not to grand and universal 
principles, but to petty questions of ceremony 
and minor points of faith, tended yet farther 
to confine and depress their genius. Their 
families were not the less scenes of love, be¬ 
cause they preserved parental authority in its 
state; but the austerity of their manner tended 
to repress the imaginative faculties of the 
young. If they, indulged themselves in any 
relaxation of manner, it was not with flowing 
eloquence, but with the quaint conceit and 
grave jest that they garnished their conversa¬ 
tion or their discourses. Their religion wore 
a dark and uncouth garb; but to this we are 
indebted, in no small degree, for its preserva¬ 
tion through times of demoralizing luxury. 

A great change has taken place, of late 
years, in the literature and eloquence of Pro¬ 
testant Dissenters. As they ceased to be ob¬ 
jects of persecution or of scorn, they insensibly 
lost the austerity and exclusiveness of their 
character. They descended from their dusty 
retirements to share in the pursuits and inno¬ 
cent enjoyments of “this bright and breathing 
world.” Their honest bigotries gave way at 
the warm touch of social intercourse with 
those from whom they dissented. Meanwhile, 
the exertions of Whitefield,—his glowing, pas¬ 
sionate, and awful eloquence;—his daring and 
quenchless enthusiasm,—and the deep and ex¬ 
tensive impression which he made throughout 
the kingdom, necessarily aroused those who 
received his essential doctrines, into new zeal. 
The impulse thus given was happily refined 
by a taste for classical learning, and for the 
arts and embellishments of life, which was 
then gradually insinuating itself into their 
churches. Some of the new converts who 
forsook the establishment, not from repug- 



ON PULPiT ORATORY. 


85 


nance to its constitution, but to its preachers, 
maintained, in the first eagerness of their faith, 
the barbarous notion that human knowledge 
was useless, and even dangerous, to the Chris¬ 
tian minister. The absurdity of this position, 
however strikingly exemplified in the advan¬ 
tages gained by the enemies of those who 
acted on it, served only to increase the desire 
of the more enlightened and liberal among the 
non-conformists, to emulate the church in the 
intellectual qualification of their preachers. 
They speedily enlarged the means of educa¬ 
tion among them for the sacred office, and en¬ 
couraged those habits of study, which promote 
a refinement and delicacy of feeling in the 
minds which they enlighten. Meanwhile, their 
active participation in the noblest schemes of 
benevolence, tended yet farther to expand their 
moral horizon. Youths were found among 
them prepared to sacrifice all the enjoyments 
of civilized life, and at the peril of their lives 
to traverse the remotest and the wildest re¬ 
gions, that they might diffuse that religion 
which is everywhere the parent of arts, chari¬ 
ties, and peace. It is not the least benefit of 
their Missionary exertions, that they have 
given a romantic tinge to the feelings of men 
“ in populous city pent,” and engrossed with 
the petty and distracting cares of commerce. 
These form the true Evangelical chivalry, 
supplying to their promoters no small measure 
of that mental refinement and elevation, which 
the far less noble endeavours to recover the 
Holy Sepulchre shed on Europe in the middle 
ages. It is not easy to estimate the advantages 
which spring from the extension of the imagi¬ 
nation into the grandest regions of the earth, 
and from the excitement of sympathies for the 
condition of the most distant and degraded of 
the species. The merchant, whose thoughts 
would else rarely travel beyond his desk and 
his fire-side, is thus busied with high musings 
on the progress of the Gospel in the deserts 
of Africa—skims with the lonely bark over 
tropical seas—and sends his wishes and his 
prayers over deserts which human footstep 
has rarely trodden. Missionary zeal, thus dif¬ 
fused among the people, has necessarily ope¬ 
rated yet more strongly on the minds of the 
ministers, who have leisure to indulge in these 
delicious dreamings which such a cause may 
sanction. These excellent men are now, for 
the most part, not only the instructors, but the 
ornaments of the circles in which they move. 
The time which they are able to give to litera¬ 
ture is well employed for the benefit of their 
flocks. In the country, more especially, their 
gentle manners, their extended information, 
and their pure and blameless lives, do incalcu¬ 
lable good to the hearts of their ruder hearers, 
independent of their public services. Not 
only in the more solemn of their duties,—in 
admonishing the guilty, comforting the afflicted, 
and cheering the dying—do they bless those 
around them ; but by their demeanour, usually 
dignified, yet cheerful, and their conversation 
decorous, yet lively; they raise incalculably 
the tone of social intercourse, and heighten 
tho innocent enjoyment of their friends, feome 
nf them are, at the present day, exhibiting no 
or Unary gifts and energiesand to the most 


distinguished of these, we propose to direct 
the attention of our readers. 

Mr. Hall, though perhaps the most distin¬ 
guished ornament of the Calvinistic* Dissent¬ 
ers, does not afford the best opportunity for 
criticism. His excellence does not consist in 
the predominance of one of his powers, but in 
the exquisite proportion and harmony of all. 
The richness, variety, and extent of his know¬ 
ledge, are not so remarkable as his absolute 
mastery over it. He moves about in the lof¬ 
tiest sphere of contemplation, as though he 
were “native and endued to its element.” He 
uses the finest classical allusions, the noblest 
images, and the most exquisite words, as though 
they were those which came first to his mind, 
and which formed his natural dialect. There 
is not the least appearance of straining after 
greatness in his most magnificent excursions, 
but he rises to the loftiest heights with a child¬ 
like ease. His style is one of the clearest and 
simplest—the least encumbered with its own 
beauty—of an}' which ever has been written. 
It is bright and lucid as a mirror, and its most 
highly-wrought and sparkling embellishments 
are like ornaments of crystal, which, even in 
their brilliant inequalities of surface, give 
back to the eye little pieces of true imagery 
set before them. 

The works of this great preacher are, in the 
highest sense of the term, imaginative, as dis¬ 
tinguished not only from the didactic, but from 
the fanciful. He possesses “ the vision and 
the faculty divine,” in as high a degree as any 
of our writers in prose. His noblest passages 
do but make truth visible in the form of beauty, 
and “ clothe upon” abstract ideas, till they be¬ 
come palpable in exquisite shapes. The dullest 
writer would not convey the same meaning in 
so few words, as he has done in the most sub¬ 
lime of his illustrations. Imagination, when 
like his of the purest water, is so far from be¬ 
ing improperly employed on divine subjects, 
that it only finds its real objects in the true 
and the eternal. This power it is which dis¬ 
dains the scattered elements of beauty, as they 
appear, distinctly in an imperfect world, and 
strives by accumulation, and by rejecting the 
alloy cast on all things, to imbody to the mind 
that ideal beauty which shall be realized here¬ 
after. This, by shedding a consecrating light 
on all it touches, and “bringing them into 
one,” anticipates the future harmony of crea¬ 
tion. This already sees the “ soul of goodness 
in things evil,” which shall one day change 
the evil into its likeness. This already begins 
the triumph over the separating powers of death 
and time, and renders their victory doubtful, 
by making us feel the immortality of the affec¬ 
tions. Such is the faculty which is employed 
by Mr. Hall to its noblest uses. There is no 
rhetorical flourish—no mere pomp of words— 
in his most eloquent discourses. With vast 
excursive power, indeed, he can range through 
all the glories of the Pagan world, and seizing 
those traits of beauty which they derived from 


* We use this epithet merely as that which will moit 
distinctively characterize the extensive class to which 
it is applied—well aware that there are shades of differ¬ 
ence among them—and that many of them would decline 
to call themselves after any name bat that of Christ. 







86 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


primeval revelation, restore them to the sys¬ 
tem of truth. But he is ever best when he is 
intensest—when he unveils the mighty foun¬ 
dations of the rock of ages—or makes the 
hearts of his hearers vibrate with a strange 
joy which they will recognise in more exalted 
stages of their being. 

Mr. Hall has, unfortunately, committed but 
few of his discourses to the press. His Ser¬ 
mon on the tendencies of Modern Infidelity 
is one of the noblest specimens of his genius. 
Nothing can be more fearfully sublime, than 
the picture which he gives of the desolate 
state to which Atheism would reduce the 
world; or more beautiful and triumphant, 
than his vindication of the social affections. 
His Sermon on the Death of Princess Char¬ 
lotte contains a philosophical and eloquent 
development of the causes which make the 
sorrows of those who are encircled by the 
brightest appearances of happiness, peculiarly 
affecting; and gives an exquisite picture of the 
gentle victim adorned with sacrificial glories. 
His discourses on War—on the Discourage¬ 
ments and supports of the Christian Ministry— 
and on the Work of the Holy Spirit—are of 
great and various excellence. But, as our 
limits will allow only a single extract, we pre¬ 
fer giving the close of a Sermon preached in 
the prospect of the invasion of England by 
Napoleon, in which he blends the finest re¬ 
membrance of the antique world—the dearest 
associations of British patriotism—and the 
pure spirit of the gospel—in a strain as noble 
as could have been poured out by Tyrtseus. 

“ To form an adequate idea of the duties of 
this crisis, it will be necessary to raise your 
minds to a level with your station, to extend 
your views to a distant futurity, and to conse¬ 
quences the most certain, though most remote. 
By a series of criminal enterprises, by the 
successes of guilty ambition, the liberties of 
Europe have been gradually extinguished: 
the subjugation of Holland, Switzerland, and 
the free towns of Germany, has completed that 
catastrophe; and we are the only people in 
the eastern hemisphere who are in possession 
of equal laws, and a free constitution. Free¬ 
dom, driven from every spot on the continent, 
has sought an asylum in a country which she 
always chose for her favourite abode: but she 
is pursued even here, and threatened with de 
struction. The inundation of lawless power, 
after covering the whole earth, threatens to 
follow us here; and we are most exactly, most 
critically placed in the only aperture where it 
can be successfully repelled, in the Thermopylae 
of the universe. As far as the interests of free¬ 
dom are concerned, the most important by far 
of sublunary interests, you, my countrymen, 
stand in the capacity of the federal representa 
tives of the human race; for with you it is to 
determine (under God) in what condition the 
latest posterity shall be born; their fortunes 
are intrusted to your care, and on your con¬ 
duct at this moment depends the colour and 
complexion of their destiny. If liberty, after 
being extinguished on the continent, is suf¬ 
fered to expire here, whence is it ever to 
emerge in the midst of that thick night that 
will invest it? It remains with you then to 


decide whether that freedom, at whose voice 
the kingdoms of Europe awoke from the sleep 
of ages, to run a career of virtuous emulation 
in every thing great and good; the freedom 
which dispelled the mists of superstition, and 
invited the nations to behold their God; whose 
magic touch kindled the rays of genius, the 
enthusiasm of poetry, and the flame of elo¬ 
quence ; the freedom which poured into our 
lap opulence and arts, and embellished life 
with innumerable institutions and improve¬ 
ments, till it became a theatre of wonders; it is 
for you to decide whether this freedom shall 
yet survive, or be covered with a funeral pall, 
and wrapped in eternal gloom. It is not 
necessary to await your determinatiob. In the 
solicitude you feel to approve yourselves 
worthy of such a trust, every thought of what 
is afflicting in warfare, every apprehension of 
danger must vanish, and you are impatient to 
mingle in the battle of the civilized world. Go 
then, ye defenders of your country, accompa¬ 
nied with every auspicious omen; advance 
with alacrity into the field, where God himself 
musters the hosts to war. Religion is too 
much interested in your success, not to lend 
you her aid; she will shed over this enter¬ 
prise her selectest influence. While you are 
engaged in the field many will repair to the 
closet, many to the sanctuary; the faithful of 
every name will employ that prayer which has 
power with God; the feeble hands which are 
unequal to any other weapon, will grasp the 
sword of the Spirit; and from myriads of 
humble, contrite hearts, the voice of interces¬ 
sion, supplication, and weeping, will mingle 
in its ascent to heaven with the shout of battle 
and the shock of arms. 

“ While you have every thing to fear from 
the success of the enemy, you have every 
means of preventing that success, so that it is 
next to impossible for victory not to crown 
your exertions. The extent of your resources, 
under God, is equal to the justice of our cause. 
But should Providence determine otherwise, 
should you fall in this struggle, should the 
nation fall, you will have the satisfaction (the 
purest allotted to man) of having performed 
your part; your names will be enrolled with 
the most illustrious dead, while posterity to 
the end of time, as often as they revolve the 
events of this period, (and they will incessantly 
revolve them,) will turn to you a reverential 
eye, while they mourn over the freedom which 
is entombed in your sepulchre. I cannot but 
imagine the virtuous heroes, legislators, and 
patriots, of every age and country, are bending 
from their elevated seats to witness this con¬ 
test, as if they were incapable, till it be brought 
to a favourable issue, of enjoying their eternal 
repose. Enjoy that repose, illustrious immor¬ 
tals ! Your mantle fell when you ascended, 
and thousands, inflamed with your spirit, and 
impatient to tread in your steps, are ready to 
swear by Him that sittelh upon the throne, and 
livcth for ever and ever, they will protect freedom 
in her last asylum, and never desert that cause 
which you sustained by your labours, and ce¬ 
mented with your blood. And thou, sole Ruler 
among the children of men, to whom the shields 
of the earth belong, gird on thy sword , thou AM 



RECOLLECTIONS OF LISBON. 


87 


Mighty: go forth with our hosts in the day of 
battle! Impart, in addition to their hereditary 
valour, that confidence ofsuccess which springs 
from thy presence ! Pour into their hearts the 
spirit of departed heroes ! Inspire them with 
thine own ; and, while led by thine hand, and 
fighting under thy banners, open thou their 
eyes to behold in every valley and in every 
plain, what the prophet beheld by the same 
illumination—chariots of fire, and horseS of 
fire : Then shall the strong man be as tow, and the 
maker of it as a spai'k; and they shall burn togc~ 
ther , and none shall quench them.” 

There is nothing very remarkably in Mr. 
Hall’s manner of delivering his sermons. His 
simplicity, yet solemnity of deportment, en¬ 
gage the attention, but do not promise any of 
his most rapturous effusions. His voice is 
feeble, but distinct, and, as he proceeds, trem¬ 
bles beneath his images, and conveys the 
idea, that the spring of sublimity and beauty 
in his mind is exhaustless, and would pour 
forth a more copious stream, if it had a wider 


channel than can be supp.ied by the bodily 
organs. The plainest, and least inspired of 
his discourses, are not without delicate gleams 
of imagery and felicitous turns of expression. 
He expatiates on the prophecies with a kindred 
spirit, and affords awful glimpses into the valley 
of vision. He often seems to conduct his hear¬ 
ers to the top of the “ Delectable Mountains,” 
whence they can see from afar the glorious 
gates of the eternal city. He seems at home 
among the marvellous Revelations of St. John ; 
and, while he expatiates on .them, leads his 
hearers breathless through ever-varying scenes 
of mystery, far more glorious and surprising 
than the wildest of oriental fables. He stops 
when they most desire that he should proceed 
—when he has just disclosed the dawnings of 
the inmost glory to their enraptured minds— 
and leaves them full of imaginations of “ things 
not made with hands,”—of joys too ravish¬ 
ing for smiles—and of impulses which wing 
their hearts, “ along the line of limitless de¬ 
sires.” 


1 


RECOLLECTIONS OF LISBON. 

[New Monthly Magazine.] 


Ox the first of May, 1818 , I sailed in one 
of the government packets, from the beautiful 
harbour of Falmouth, for Lisbon. The voy¬ 
age, though it only lasted eight days, was suf¬ 
ficiently long to excite an earnest desire for 
our arrival at the port of our destiny. The 
water which so majestically stretches before 
us, when seen from a promontory or headland, 
loses much of its interest and its grandeur 
when it actually circles round us and shuts 
us in from the world. The part which we are 
able to discern from the deck of a vessel, ap¬ 
pears of very small diameter, and its aspect 
in fine weather is so uniform as to weary the 
eye, which seems to sicken with following the 
dance of the sunbeams, which alone diversify 
its surface. There is something painfully 
restless and shadowy in all around us, which 
forces on our hearts that feeling of the insta¬ 
bility anct transitoriness of our nature, which 
we lose among the moveless grandeurs of the 
universe. On the sea, all without, instead of 
affording a resting-place for the soul, is em¬ 
blematic of the fluctuation of our mortal bei-ng. 
Those who have long been accustomed to it 
seem accommodated to their lot in feeling and 
in character; snatch a hasty joy with eagerness 
wherever it can be found, careless of the future, 
and borne lightly on the wave of life without 
forethought or struggle. To a landsman there 
is something inexpressibly sad in the want of 
material objects which endure. The eye turns 
disappointed from the glorious panoply of 
clouds which attend the setting sun, where it 
has fancied thrones, and golden cities, and tem¬ 
ples with their holy shrines far sunken within 


outer courts of splendour, while it feels 'that 
they are but for a moment, gay mockeries of 
the state of man on earth. Often, during my 
little voyage, did I, while looking over the side 
of the vessel on the dark water, think of the 
beautiful delineation by the most profound of 
living poets, of the tender imaginations of a 
mariner who had been reared among the 
mountains, and in his heart was “half a shep¬ 
herd on the stormy seas,” who was wont to 
hear in the piping shrouds “the tones of water¬ 
falls and inland sounds of caves and trees,” 
and 

“ When the regular wind 
Between the tropics fill’d the steady sail, 

And blew with the same breath through days and weeks, 

Lengthening invisibly its weary line 

Along the cloudless main, who in those hours 

Of tiresome indolence, would often hang 

Over the vessel’s side, and gaze and gaze: 

And while the broad green wave and sparkling foam 
Flashed round him images and hues that wrought 
In union with the employment of his heart, 

He, thus by feverish passion overcome, 

Even with the organs of his bodily eye, 

Below 7 him, in the bosom of the deep, 

Saw mountains—saw the forms of sheep that grazed 
On verdant hills—with dwellings among trees, 

And shepherds clad in the same country gray 
Which he himself had worn.”* 

I remember, however, with gratitude two 
evenings, just after the renewal of the moon, 
which were rendered singularly lovely by a 
soft, tender, and penetrating light which seemed 


* See Wordsworth’s most affecting' pastoral of “The 
Brolhcrs.” 

















88 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


scarcely of this world. The moon on its first 
appearance, before the western lustre had en¬ 
tirely faded away, cast no reflection, however 
pale, on the waves; but seemed like some 
princely maiden exposed for the first time to 
vulgar gaze, gently to shrink back as though 
she feared some contamination to her pure and 
celestial beauty from shining forth on so busy 
and turbulent a sphere. As night advanced, it 
was a solemn pleasure to stand on the deck 
of the vessel, borne swiftly along the noiseless 
sea, and gaze on the far-retiring stars in the 
azure distance. The mind seems, in such a 
scene, almost to “o’er-inform its tenement of 
clay,” and to leap beyond it. It dwells not on the 
changes of the world ; for in its high abstrac¬ 
tion, all material things seem but passing 
shadows. Life, with its realities, appears like a 
vanishing dream, and the past a tale scarcely 
credited. The pulses of mortal existence are 
almost suspended—“thought is not—in enjoy¬ 
ment it expires.” Nothing seems to be in the 
universe but one’s self and God. No feeling 
of loneliness has entrance, for the great spirit 
of Eternal Good seems shedding mildest and 
selectest influences on all things. 

On the eighth morning after our departure 
from Falmouth, on coming as usual on the 
deck, I found that we were sailing almost close 
under “the Rock of Lisbon,” which breasts 
the vale of Cintra. It is a stupendous moun¬ 
tain of rock, extending very far into the sea, 
and rising to a dizzy height above it. The sides 
are broken into huge precipices and caverns 
of various and grotesque forms, are covered 
with dark moss, or exhibit naked stones black¬ 
ened with a thousand storms. The top con¬ 
sists of an unequal ridge of apparently shivered 
rock, sometimes descending in jagged lines, 
and at others rising into sharp, angular and 
pointed pyramids, which'seem to strike into 
the clouds. What a feeling does such a mo¬ 
nument excite, shapeless, rugged, and setting 
all form at defiance—when the heart feels that 
it has outlived a thousand generations of pe¬ 
rishable man, and belongs to an antiquity com¬ 
pared with which the wonders of Egypt are 
modern ! It seems like the unhewn citadel of 
a giant race; the mighty wreck of an older 
and more substantial world. 

Leaving the steeps and everlasting recesses 
of this huge mass, we passed the coasts of 
Portugal. The fields lying near the shore ap¬ 
peared for the most part barren, though broken 
into gentle undulations, and adorned with large 
spreading mansions and neat villages. A 
pleasant breeze brought us soon to the mouth 
of the Tagus, where a scene of enchantment, 
“ too bright and fair almost for remembrance,” 
burst upon my view. We sailed between the 
two fortresses which guard the entrance of the 
river, here several miles in width, close to the 
walls of that on the left, denominated “Fort 
St. Julian.” The river, seen up to the beautiful 
castle of Belem, lay before us, not serpentine 
nor perceptibly contracting, but between al¬ 
most parallel shores, like a noble avenue of 
crystal. It was studded with vessels of every 
region, as the sky is sprinkled with stars, which 


us softly onwards. On both sides, the shore 
rose into a series of hills on the right side, 
wild, abrupt, mazy, and tangled, and on the 
left, covered with the freshest verdure and in¬ 
terspersed with luxuriant trees. Noble seats 
appeared crowning the hills and sloping on 
their sides; and in the spaces between the 
elevated spots, glimpses were caught of sweet 
valleys winding among scattered woods, or 
of princely domes and spires in the richness 
of the distance. All wore, not the pale livery 
of an opening spring, but the full bloom of 
maturest summer. The transition to such a 
scene, sparkling in the richest tints of sunshine 
and overhung by a cloudless sky of the deepest 
blue, from the scanty and just-budding foliage 
of Cornwall, as I left it, was like the change 
of a Midsummer Night’s Dream; a sudden ad¬ 
mission into fairy worlds. As we glided up 
the enchanted channel, the elevations on the 
left became overspread with magnificent build¬ 
ings, like mingled temples and palaces, rising 
one above another into segments of vast am¬ 
phitheatres, and interspersed with groves of the 
fullest yet most delicate green. Close to the 
water lay a barbaric edifice, of rich though 
fantastic architecture, a relic of Moorish gran¬ 
deur, now converted into the last earthly abode 
of the monarchs of Portugal. Hence the 
buildings continued to thicken over the hills 
and to assume a more confused, though 
scarcely less romantic aspect, till we anchored 
in front of the most populous part of Lisbon. 
The city was stretched beyond the reach of 
the eye, on every side, upon the ascents and 
summits of very lofty and steep elevations. 
The white houses, thickly intersected with 
windows, mostly framed with green and white 
lattice-work, seemed to have their foundations 
on the tops of others: terraces appeared lifted 
•far above the lofty .buildings, and other edifices 
rose above them; gardens looked as suspended 
by magic in the clouds, and the whole scene 
wore an aspect of the most gorgeous confusion 
—“ all bright and glittering in the smokeless 
air.” We landed, and the enchantment van¬ 
ished, at least for a season. Very narrow 
streets, winding in ceaseless turnings over 
steep ascents and declivities, paved only with 
sharp flints, and filthy beyond compare, now 
seemed to form the interior of the promised 
elysium. Nature and the founders of the city 
appeared to have done their best to render the 
spot a paradise, and modern generations their 
worst to reduce it to a sink of misery. 

Lisbon, like ancient Rome, is built on at 
least seven hills. It is fitted by situation to be 
one of the most beautiful cities in the world. 
Seated, or rather enthroned on such a spot, 
commanding a magnificent harbour, and over¬ 
looking one of the noblest rivers of Europe, it 
might be more distinguished for external 
beauty than Athens in the days of her free¬ 
dom. Now it seems rather to be the theatre in 
which the two great powers of deformity and 
loveliness are perpetually struggling for the 
mastery. The highest admiration and the 
most sickening disgust alternately prevail in 


rested on a bosom of waters so calm as 
scarcely to be curled by the air which wafted 


the mind of the beholder. Never was there so 
strange an intermixture of the mighty and the 
mean—of the pride of wealth and the abject- 





RECOLLECTIONS OF LISBON. 


89 


ness of poverty—of the memorials of greatness 
and the symbols of low misery—of the filthy 
and the romantic. I will dwell, however, on 
the fair side of the picture ; as I envy not those 
who delight in exhibiting the frightful or the 
gloomy, in the moral or the natural world. 
Often after traversing dark and wretched 
streets, at a sudden turn, a prospect of inimi¬ 
table beauty bursts on the eye of the spectator. 
He finds himself, perhaps, on the brink of a 
mighty hollow scooped out by nature amidst 
hills, all covered to the tops with edifices, save 
where groves of the freshest verdure are in¬ 
terspersed ; or on one side, a mountain rises 
into a cone far above the city, tufted with 
woods and crowned with some castellated pile, 
the work of other days. The views fronting 
the Tagus are still more extensive and grand. 
On one of these I stumbled a few evenings 
after my arrival, which almost suspended the 
breath with wonder. I had laboured through 
a steep and narrow street almost choked with 
dirt, when a small avenue on one side, ap¬ 
parently more open, tempted me to step aside 
to breathe the fresher air. I found myself on 
a little plot of ground, hanging apparently in 
the air, in the front of one of the churches. I 
stood against the column of the portico ab¬ 
sorbed in delight and wonder. Before me lay 
a large portion of the city—houses descended 
beneath houses, sinking almost precipitously 
to a fearful depth beneath me, whose frame¬ 
works, covered over with vines of delicate 
green, broke the ascent like prodigious steps, 
by which a giant might scale the eminence— 
the same “ wilderness of building” filled up the 
vast hollow, and rose by a more easy slope to 
the top of the opposite hills, which were 
crowned with turrets, domes, mansions, and 
regal pavilions of a dazzling whiteness—be¬ 
yond the Tagus, on the southern shore, the 
coast rose into wild and barren hills, wearing 
an aspect of the roughest sublimity and gran¬ 
deur—and, in the midst, occupying the bosom, 
of the great vale, close between the glorious 
city and the unknown wilds, lay the calm and 
majestic river, from two to three miles in width, 
seen with the utmost distinctness to its mouth, 
on each side of which the two castles which 
guard it were visible, and spread over with a 
thousand ships—onward yet farther, far as the 
eye could reach, the living ocean was glisten¬ 
ing, and ships, like specks of the purest white, 
were seen crossing it to and fro, giving to the 
scene an imaginary extension, by carrying the 
mind with them to far-distant shores. It was 
the time of sunset, and clouds of the richest 
saffron rested on the bosom of the air, and 
were reflected in softer tints in the waters. Not 
a whisper reached the ear. “ The holy time 
was quiet as a nun breathless with adoration.” 
The scene looked like some vision of blissful 
enchantment, and I scarcely dared to stir or 
breathe lest it should vanish away. 

The eastern quarter of Lisbon, which is 
chiefly built since the great earthquake, stands 
almost on level ground; and, though sur¬ 
rounded by steep hills, with trees among their 
precipices, and aerial terraces on their sum¬ 
mits, is not in itself very singular or romantic. 
A square of noble extent, open on the south 
12 


to the Tagus, which here spreads out into a 
breadth of many miles, so as to wear almost 
the appearance of an inland lake, forms the 
southern part of this modern city. At the 
south-eastern angle, close to the river, stands 
the Exchange, which is a square white build¬ 
ing, of no particular beauty or size. The sides 
of the square are occupied with dull-looking 
white buildings, which are chiefly offices of 
state, excepting, indeed, that the plan is in¬ 
completely executed, as the unfinished slate 
of the western range of edifices sadly evinces. 
In the centre is an equestrian statue of King 
Joseph, on a scale so colossal that the image 
of Charles on horseback at Charing Cross 
would appear a miniature by its side. From 
the northern side of this quadrangle run three 
streets, narrow but built in perfect uniformity, 
and of more than a quarter of a mile in length, 
which connect it with another square called 
the Rocio, of nearly similar magnitude and 
proportions. The houses in these streets are 
white, of five stories in height, with shops, 
more resembling cells than the brilliant re¬ 
positories of Cheapside, in the lower depart¬ 
ments, and latticed windows in the upper 
stories.—They have on both sides elevated 
pathways for foot passengers, neatly paved 
with blocks of stone, and leaving space for 
two carriages to pass in the centre. The 
Rocio is surrounded on three sides with houses 
resembling those in the streets, and on the 
north by a range of building belonging to the 
Inquisition, the subterranean prisons of which 
extend far beneath the square. A little on¬ 
ward to the north of this area, amidst filthy 
suburbs, stands the public garden of the city. 
It is an oblong piece of ground, of considera¬ 
ble extent, surrounded by high walls, but al¬ 
ways open at proper hours to the public. It 
is planted with high trees of the most delicate 
green, which, however, do not form a mass of 
impervious shade, but afford many spots of the 
thickest shelter, and give room for the play 
of the warm sunbeams, and for the contem¬ 
plation of the stainless sky. The garden is 
laid out with more regularity than taste: one 
broad walk runs completely through it from 
north to south, on each side of which, beneath 
the loftier shade, are tall hedge-rows, solid 
masses of green, cut into the exactest parallel¬ 
ograms. The equal spaces on each side of the 
middle walk are intersected by similar hedge¬ 
rows—sometimes curving into an open circle, 
surrounded with circular trenches; at others, 
enclosing an angular space, railed in and culti¬ 
vated with flowers, and occasionally expanding 
into shapes yet more fantastic.—There is no in 
tricacy, no beautiful wildness in the scene- 
“half the platform just reflects the other” in 
the minutest features—but the green is so fresh 
and so abundant, and the air so delicately fra 
grant, that this garden forms a retreat in the 
warmth of summer which seems almost ely 
sian. 

There are two small places of public amuse¬ 
ment in Lisbon, where dramatic pieces are 
performed, chiefly taken from the Spanish. 
The “legitimate drama,” however, is of little 
attraction, compared with the wonderful con¬ 
tortions and rope-dancings which these houses 



90 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


exhibit, and which are truly surprising. The 
Opera House, called the Theatre San Carlos, 
is, except on a few particular occasions, al¬ 
most deserted. The audiences are usually so 
thin, that it is not usual to light up the body 
of the house, except on particular days, when 
the rare illumination is duly announced in the 
bills. I visited it fortunately on the birth-day 
of the king, which is one of the most splendid 
of its festivals. Its interior is not much smaller 
than that of Covent Garden Theatre, though 
it appears at the first glance much less, from 
the extreme beauty of the proportions. The 
form is that of an ellipse, exquisitely turned, 
intersected at the farther extremity by the 
stage. The sides are occupied by five tiers of 
boxes, at least in appearance, for the upper 
circles, which are appropriated to the populace 
by way of gallery, are externally uniform with 
the rest of the theatre. The prevailing colour 
is white; the ornaments between the boxes, 
consisting of harps and tasteful devices, are 
of brown and gold, and elegantly divided into 
compartments by rims of burnished gold. The 
middle of the house is occupied by the grand 
entrance into the pit, the royal box, and the 
gallery above it, which is in continuation of 
the higher circle. The royal box is from 
twelve to fifteen feet in length, and occupies 
in height the space of three rows of the com¬ 
mon boxes. Above are the crown and regal 
arms in burnished gold, and the sides are sup¬ 
ported by statues of the same radiant appear¬ 
ance. Curtains of green silk, of a fine texture, 
usually conceal its internal splendours; buton 
this occasion they were drawn aside at the 
same moment that the stage was discovered, 
and displayed the interior illuminated with 
great brilliancy. This seat of royalty is di¬ 
vided into two stories—a slight gallery being 
thrown over the back part of it. Its ground 
is a deep crimson; the top descends towards 
the back in a beautiful concave, representing 
a rich veil of ermine. In the front of the 
lower compartment, behind the seats, is the 
crown of Portugal, figured on deep green vel¬ 
vet; and the sides are adorned with elegant 
mirrors. The centre of the roof of the theatre 
is an ellipse, painted to represent the sky with 
the moon and stars visible ; the sides sloping 
to the upper boxes are of white adorned with 
gold and crimson. The stage is supported on 
each side by two pillars of the composite order, 
of white and gold, half in relief, with a brazen 
statue between each of them. It forms an 
excellent framework for a dramatic picture. 
The most singular feature of the house is a 
clock over the centre of the stage, which regu¬ 
larly strikes the hours, without mercy. What 
a noble invention this for the use of those who 
contend for the unity of lime! How nicely 
would it enable the French critics to estimate 
the value of a tragedy at a single glance! 
How accurately might the time be measured 
out in which eternal attachments should be 
formed, conspiracies planned, and states over¬ 
thrown ; how might the passions of the soul 
be .1. ed to a minute, and the rise and 
swell of the great emotions of the heart deter¬ 
mined to a hair; with what accuracy might 
the moments which the heroes have yet to live 


be counted out like those of culprits at the 
Old Bailey ! What huge criticisms of Corneille 
and Voltaire would that little instrument sup¬ 
ply ! What volumes, founded on its move¬ 
ments, would it render superfluous! Even 
Grecian regularity must yield before it, and 
criticism triumph, by this invariable standard, 
at once over Sophocles and Shakspeare. 

The scenery was wretched—the singers 
tolerable—and the band excellent. The ballet 
took place between the acts of the -opera, and 
was spun out to great length. The dancing 
consisted partly of wonderful twirlings of the 
French school, and partly of the more wonder¬ 
ful contortions of the Portuguese; both kinds 
exceedingly clever, but exhibiting very little 
of true beauty, grace, or elegance. At the 
close of the first act, a perfect shower of roses, 
pinks, and carnations, together with printed 
sonnets, was poured down from the tbp of the 
theatre in honour of his majesty, whose ab¬ 
sence, however, even Portuguese loyalty can¬ 
not, pardon. 

The churches are the most remarkable of 
the public buildings of. Lisbon; though plain 
on the outside, they are exceedingly splendid 
in the interior. The tutelary saints are richer 
than many Continental princes, though their 
treasures are only displayed to excite the re¬ 
verence or the cupidity of the people on high 
and festal occasions. The most beautiful, 
though not the largest of the churches which I 
have examined, is that of the Estrella, which 
is lined with finely-varied and highly-polished 
marble, vaulted over with a splendid and 
sculptured roof, and adorned, in its gilded 
recesses, with beautiful pictures. Were it not, 
indeed, for the impression made on me by one 
of the latter, I should scarcely have mentioned 
this edifice, unable as I am technically to de¬ 
scribe it. The piece to which I allude is not, 
that I can discover, held in particular estima¬ 
tion, or the production of any celebrated artist; 
but it excited in me feelings of admiration and 
delight, which can never die away. It repre¬ 
sents §aint John in the Isle of Patmos, gazing 
on the vision in which the angels are pouring 
forth the vials, and with the pen in his hand, 
ready to commit to sacred and imperishable 
record the awful and mysterious scenes opened 
before him. Never did I behold or imagine 
such a figure. He is sitting, half entranced 
with wonder at the revelation disclosed to 
him, half mournfully conscious of the evils 
which he is darkly to predict to a fated and 
unheeding world. The face, in its mere form 
and colouring, is most beautiful: its features 
are perfectly lovely, though inclining rather to 
cherubic roundness than Grecian austerity, 
and its roseate bloom of youth is gently touch¬ 
ed and softened by the feelings attendant on 
the sad and holy vocation of the beloved dis¬ 
ciple. The head is bent forward, in eager¬ 
ness, anxiety, and reverence; the eyebrows 
arched in wonder, yet bearing in every line 
some undefinable expression of pity; the eyes 
are uplifted, and beaming with holy inspira¬ 
tion, yet mild, soft, angelical; around the ex¬ 
quisitely-formed mouth, sweet tenderness for 
the inevitable sorrows of mankind are playing; 
and the bright chestnut hair, failing in masses 





RECOLLECTIONS OF LISBON. 


91 


over the shoulders, gives to all this expression 
of high yet soft emotion, a finishing grace and 
completeness. This figure displays such un¬ 
speakable sweetness tempering such prophetic 
fire; such religious and saintly purity, mingled 
with so genial a compassion ; it is at once so 
individual and so ideal; so bordering on the 
celestial, and yet so perfectly within the range 
of human sympathies; that it is difficult to 
say, whether the delicious emotions which it 
inspires partake most of wonder or of love. 
The image seemed, like sweet music, to sink 
into the soul, there to remain for ever. To see 
such a piece is really to be made better and 
happier. The recollection is a precious trea¬ 
sure for the feelings and the imagination, of 
which nothing, while they endure, can deprive 
them. 

The church at Belem, a fortified place on 
the Tagus, three or four miles from Lisbon, 
where the kings and royal family of Portugal 
have, for many generations, been interred, 
must not be forgotten. It is one of the most 
ancient buildings in the kingdom, having ori¬ 
ginally been erected by the Romans, and 
splendidly adorned by the Moorish sovereigns. 
Formed of white stone, it is now stained to a 
reddish brown by the mere influence of years, 
and frowns over the water “cased in the un¬ 
feeling armour of old time.” Its shape is 
oblong, its sides of gigantic proportions, and 
its massive appearance most grand and awe¬ 
inspiring. The principal entrance is by a 
deep archway, reaching to a great height, and 
circular within, ornamented above and around 
with the most crowded, venerable, and yet 
fantastic devices—martyrs and heroes of chi¬ 
valry—swords and crosiers—monarchs and 
saints—crosses and sceptres—“ the roses and 
flowers of kings” and the sad emblems of 
mortality—all wearing the stamp of deep anti¬ 
quity, all appearing carved out of one eternal 
rock, and promising by their air of solid 
grandeur to survive as many stupendous 
changes as those which have already left them 
unshaken. The interior of this venerable 
edifice is not less awe-breathing or substantial. 
Eight huge pillars of barbaric architecture, 
and covered all over with strange figures and 
grotesque ornaments in relievo, support the 
roof, which is white, ponderous, and of a noble 
simplicity, being only divided into vast square 
compartments by the beams which cross it. 
Such a pile, devoted to form the last resting- 
place of a line of kings who have, each in his 
brief span of time, held the fate of millions at 
his pleasure, cannot fail to excite solemn and 
pensive thought. And yet what are the feel¬ 
ings thus excited, to those meditations to 
which the great repository of the illustrious 
deceased in England invites us ! Here we 
think of nothing but the perishableness of man 
in his best estate—the emptiness of human 
honours—the low and frail nature of all the 
distinctions of earth. A race of monarchs 
occupy but a narrow vault: they were kings, 
and now are dust; and this idea forced home 
upon us, makes us feel that the most potent 
and enduring of worldly things —thrones, 
dynasties, and the peaceable succession of 
high families—are but as feeble shadows. We 


learn only to feel our weakness. But in the 
sacred place where all that could perish of our 
orators, philosophers, and poets,is reposing, we 
feel our mortality only to lend us a stronger 
and more ethereal sense of our eternal being. 
Life and death seem met together, as in a holy 
fane, in peaceful concord. While we feel that 
the mightiest must yield to the stern law of 
necessity, we know that the very monuments 
which record the decay of their outward 
frame, are so many proofs and symbols tha» 
they shall never really expire. We feel that 
those whose remembrance is thus extended 
beyond the desolating power of the grave, 
over whose fame death and mortal accidents 
have no power, are not themselves destroyed. 
And when we recollect the more indestructible 
monuments of their genius, those works, which 
live not only in the libraries of the studious, 
but in the hearts and imaginations of men; 
we are conscious at once, that the spirit which 
conceived, and the souls which appreciate and 
love them, are not of the earth, earthy. Our 
thoughts are not wholly of humiliation and 
sorrow ! but stretch forward, with a pensive 
majesty, into the permanent and the im¬ 
mortal. 

Having inspected the city, I was naturally 
anxious to visit the celebrated Aqueduct, which 
is carried across a deep valley two or three 
miles from Lisbon. Having passed the su¬ 
burbs, and reached the open country, I saw, at 
a sudden turn in the pathway, the mighty ob¬ 
ject of my wanderings. I found myself on the 
summit of a gently sloping declivity, at a little 
distance from the foot of which a hill rose to 
an equal height, with a bold and luxuriant sweep. 
It is across the expanse thus formed, that the 
stupendous bridge runs, in two straight lines 
from each eminence, which form an obtuse 
angle in the centre. The whole is supported 
by thirty-six arches, which, as the ground from 
each extremity sinks, increase in height, or 
rather depth, till in the middle of the pile, the 
distance to which they ascend from the vale is 
fearful. This huge structure is composed of 
dark gray stone, the deep colour of which gives 
to its massiveness an air of the sternest gran¬ 
deur. The water is conveyed across the level 
thus formed, through a chain of building which 
occupies its centre, and appears almost like a 
line of solid and unbroken rock. Above this 
erection, turrets of still greater height, and of 
the same materials, are reared at regular in¬ 
tervals, and crown the whole. The road i3 
thus divided into two passes, which are se¬ 
cured by high ridges of stone, in the long, un¬ 
interrupted straight lines, which have an air 
of so awful a grandeur in the noblest remains 
of Roman art. The view from the southern 
road, though romantic, is, for the most part, 
confined within narrow boundaries, as rugged 
hills arise on this side almost from the foot of 
the Aqueduct, to a height far above its towers, 
cultivated only towards the lower parts, and 
covered on the loftier spots with a thin grass 
and shapeless blocks or masses of granite. 
This mountainous ridge breaks, however, in 
the centre, and abruptly displays a piece of the 
Tagus, like an inland lake, with its tenderly 
rimpled blue, and the wild and lofty banks 





92 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


which rise precipitously beyond it. As the sun 
was declining when I traversed this path, the 
portion of craggy shore thus disclosed, and the 
shrubs which flourish among its steeps, were 
overcast with the richest tints from the west, 
and the vessels gently gliding through the 
opening made by the shaggy declivities of the 
nearer hills, completed the feeling of genial 
composure diffused over the scene. From the 
northern side, the prospect appears arrayed 
in far gayer charms. The valley here, from 
the narrow point at which it is seen, spreads 
out into a fanlike form, till the eminences on 
each side seem gradually to melt away, and 
the open country lies in full expanse to the 
view. It is a scene of fresh, reposing, and 
perfect beauty. Not an angular intersection 
breaks the roundness, or interrupts the grace, 
which characterize the whole. The hills in 
the foreground sink from each side of the 
Aqueduct, gradually to the depth of the vale, 
covered with the freshest verdure, fluctuating 
in a wave-like motion; and the more distant 
landscape appears composed of a thousand 
gentle undulations, thrown up by Nature in 
her sweetest mood, as though the earth were 
swelling with an exuberant bounty, even to the 
rim of the circling sky, with the form of which 
all is harmonious. The green in which the 
prospect is clothed, is of a softer and more 
vivid hue than in England; the pastures seem 
absolutely to sparkle on the eye; and, amidst 
this “splendour in the grass, this glory in the 
flower,” the lively groves of orange and the 
villas of purest white scattered thickly around, 
give to the picture a fairy brightness. And 
yet, setting individual associations aside, I 
prefer the scenery of my own country to this 
enchanted vale. This is a landscape to visit 
as a spectacle, not to live in. There is no 
solemnity about it,—no austere beauty,—no 
retiring loveliness ; there are no grand masses 
of shade,—no venerable oaks, which seem 
coeval with the hills over which they cast 
their shadows,—no vast colonnades, in which 
the fine spirit of the elder time seems yet to 
keep its state. Nature wears not the pale 
livery which inspires meditation or solemn 
joy; her face seems wreathed in a perpetual 
smile. The landscape breathes, indeed, of in¬ 
toxicating delight; it invites to present joy; 
but it leads to no tender reminiscences of the 
past, nor gives solemn indications of the future. 
It is otherwise in the very deficiencies, as they 
are usually regarded, of our happier land. 
There “ the pale primrose that dies unmarried” 
among the scanty hedge-rows, as an emblem 
of innocence peeping forth amidst a cheerless 
world, suggests more pensive yet delicious 
musing, than the gaudiest productions of this 
brighter clime. The wild roses, thinly inter¬ 
spersed among our thickets, with their delicate 
colouring and faint perfume, afford images of 
rustic modesty, far sweeter and more genial 
than the rich garlands which cluster here. 
Those “echoes from beyond the grave,” which 
come to us amid the stillness of forests which 
have outlived generations of men, are here 
unheard. In these valleys we are dazzled, 
surprised, enchanted ;—in ours we are moved 


with solemn yet pleasing thoughts, which “ do 
often lie too deep for tears.” 

Having traversed both sides of the aqueduct, 
I resolved to ascend one of the hills beyond it, 
for the purpose of obtaining a still more exten¬ 
sive view. After a most weary ascent, of 
which my eye had taken a very inadequate 
estimate,! reached the summit and was amply 
rewarded for my toils. To the north lay the 
prospect which I have endeavoured to de¬ 
scribe, softened in the distance; beneath was 
the huge pile, with its massive arches and 
lone turrets bridging the vale. To the south 
was the Tagus, and, a little onward, its 
entrance, where it gently blended with the sea. 
Completely round the north-eastern side of the 
horizon, the same mighty and beautiful river 
appeared flowing on far beyond Lisbon in 
a noble curve, which seemed to dissolve in 
the lighter blue of the heavens. And full to 
the west beyond the coast of Portugal, now 
irradiated with the most brilliant colouring, 
was the free and circling ocean, on which 
amidst visionary shapes of orange and saffron 
glory, the sun was, for his last moment, resting. 
Soon the sky became literally “ fretted with 
golden fire,” and the hills seemed covered 
with a tender haze of light, which rendered 
them yet lovelier. The moon began to blend 
her mild radiance with the sweet twilight, as I 
took the last glance at the vale, and hastened 
to Lisbon. 

On Thursday, the 21st of May, a grand festi¬ 
val was holden in honour of Saint George, 
who is held in peculiar reverence in Lisbon. 
On this most sacred occasion, all the buildings 
around the vast area of the Rocio were hung 
with crimson tapestry; a road was formed of 
fine gravel, guarded bylines of soldiers; and 
the troops, to a great number, in splendid uni¬ 
forms, occupied the- most conspicuous pas¬ 
sages. When all was prepared, the train is¬ 
sued from a church in one of the angles of 
the square, and slowly paraded round the path 
prepared for it. It consisted of all the eccle¬ 
siastical orders, attired in their richest vest¬ 
ments, and bearing, alternately, crosses of 
gold and silver; canopies of white, purple, 
orange, and crimson silk, bordered with deqp 
fringes; and gorgeous banners, decorated with 
curious devices. The canopy which floated 
over the consecrated wafer, formerly borne by 
the king and the princes, was, on this occasion, 
carried by the chief persons of the regency. 
But the most remarkable object was the Saint 
himself, who, “ not to speak it profanely,” is no 
other than a wooden figure, and, I am afraid, 
must yield in proportion and in grace to that 
unconsecrated work, the Apollo Belviderc. He 
was seated on a noble horse, and arrayed 
in a profusion of gems, which, according to 
the accounts of the Portuguese, human power 
could hardly calculate. His boots were of 
solid silver; his whole person begirt with jew¬ 
els, and his hat glittered in the sun like one 
prodigious diamond. He descended in state 
from the castle to the church, whence the pro¬ 
cession issued, and remained there during the 
solemnities. He was saluted on leaving his 
mansion, with a discharge of artillery, and re- 





RECOLLECTIONS OF LISBON. 


93 


ceived the same compliment on his return to 
that favoured residence. The people, who were 
of course assembled in great crowds, did not 
appear to me to look on the magnificent dis¬ 
play before them with any feeling of religious 
awe, or to regard it in any other light than, at 
the most, a national spectacle. 

Of the national character of the Portuguese 
in general, I can say very little, as my personal 
intercourse with them was extremely limited. 
Were I to believe all that some English resi¬ 
dents in Lisbon have told me, I should draw a 
gloomy picture of human degradation unre¬ 
lieved by a single redeeming grace. I should 
say that the common people are not only igno¬ 
rant and filthy, but universally dishonest; that 
they blend the vices of savage and social life, 
and are ready to become either pilferers or 
assassins; that they are cruel to their children, 
lax in friendship, and implacable in revenge; 
that the higher orders are at once the dupes 
and tyrants of their servants, familiar with 
them one moment, and brutally despotic the 
next; that they are in constant jealousy of their 
wives, and not without reason; and that even 
their vices are without dignity or decorum. 
All this can never be true , or Lisbon would not be 
subsisting in order and peace. To me, the in¬ 
habitants appear in a more amiable light. 
Filthy and ignorant the common people doubt¬ 
less are; but they are sober ; and those dreadful 
excesses and sorrows which arise from the use, 
in England, of ardent spirits, are consequently 
unknown. They are idle; but the warmth of 
the climate may, in some degree, excuse them. 
No rank is destitute of some appearance of 
native courteousness. The rich are not, indeed, 
Howards or Clarksons; they have no idea of 
exerting themselves to any great degree, to 
drawdown blessings on the heads of others or 
their own; they do not go in search of wretched¬ 
ness in order to remove it, but when misery is 
brought before them, as it is constantly here, in 
a thousand ghastly forms, they are far from with¬ 
holding such aid as money can render. The 
gardens of their country villas, which are ex¬ 
ceedingly elegant, are always open in the even¬ 
ings to any of the populace who choose to 
walk there, so that the citizen, on the numerous 
holidays which the Romish church affords, 
is not compelled to inhale the dust in some 
wretched tea-garden, which is a libel at once on 
nature and art, but may rove with his children 
■ through groves of orange and thickets of roses. 
When the company thus indulged meet any of 
the family which reside in the mansion, they 
acknowledge the favour which they are enjoy¬ 
ing by obeisances not ungracefully made, which 
are always returned with equal courtesy. I 
am assured, that this privilege is never abused; 
even the children walk amidst the flowers and 
the fruits, without the slightest idea of touching 
them. This circumstance alone would induce 
me to doubt the justice with which some have 
attempted to fix the brand of dishonesty on the 
inferior classes of Portugal. The people want 
not the natural tenderness and gentle move¬ 
ments of the heart; all their deficiencies arise 
from the absence of high principle, the lan¬ 
guishing of intellect, and the decay of the loftier 


powers and energies which dignify man. They 
have no enthusiasm, no devoted admiration, or 
Jove, for objects unconnected with the neces¬ 
sities of their mortal being, or the low grati¬ 
fications of sense. They have a few mighty 
names to lend them an inspiration, which 
might supply the place of contemporary genius; 
and with those, of which they ought to be 
fond in proportion to their rarity, they appear 
scarcely acquainted. Of the rich stores of 
poetry and romance, wdiich they might enjoy 
from the neighbouring country and almost 
similar language of Spain, they are,for the most 
part, unconscious. Not only has the spirit 
of chivalry departed from these mountains, 
where it once was glowing; but its marvel¬ 
lous and golden tales are neglected or for¬ 
gotten. 

The degradation of the public mind in Lis¬ 
bon is increased by the notorious venality of 
the ministers of justice. There is no crime for 
which indemnity may not be purchased by a 
bribe. Even offences against the government 
of the king may be winked at, if the culprit is 
able to make an ample pecuniary sacrifice. 
It is a well-known fact that some of the chief 
conspirators in the plot to assassinate Marshal 
Beresford, and change the whole order of 
things in Portugal, were able to make their 
peace with the judges, and, on the ground of 
some technical informality, were dismissed 
without trial. When any one is accused of an 
offence, he is generally sent at once to prison, 
where he remains until he can purchase his 
freedom. There does not seem, however, any 
disposition to persecution for opinions, or 
to exercise wanton cruelty. The Inquisition 
is no longer an engine in the hands of the 
priests, but is merely a tribunal for the ex¬ 
amination and the punishment of political of¬ 
fences. Death is rarely inflicted; for it brings 
no gain to the magistrate. Criminals guilty 
of the highest offences are kept in prison until 
they are forgotten, without any one knowing 
or caring about their fate. In the absence of 
the sovereign almost all the civil authorities 
have become totally corrupted, for there is no 
patriot to watch, and no public voice to awe 
them. The people appear sunk in apathy to 
all excepting gain; and the greater number 
of them crawl on with little hope, except to 
supply the cravings of hunger. The city, not¬ 
withstanding its populousness, exhibits all the 
marks of decay—buildings in ruins amidst its 
stateliest streets, and houses begun on a mag¬ 
nificent scale, and left unfinished for years. 
The foreign merchants, especially the British, 
who use it as a central port, give it an arti¬ 
ficial life, without which its condition would 
be most wretched. In bidding farewell to this 
bright abode of degraded humanity, I felt it im¬ 
possible to believe that it was destined gra¬ 
dually to become desolate and voiceless. Glo¬ 
rious indeed would be the change, if knowledge 
should expand the souls now so low and con¬ 
tracted, into a sympathy with the natural won¬ 
ders around them—if the arts should once 
more adorn the romantic city—and the orange 
groves and lovely spots among the delicate 
cork trees, should be vocal with the innocent 





94 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


gayety of happy peasants, or shed their in- and their spirit was regulated by wise and 
fluences on the hearts of youthful bards. If, beneficent governors, the capital of Portugal 
indeed, the people were awakened into energy, | would assuredly become the fairest of cities. 


ME. CHARLES LLOYD’S POEMS.* 


[London Magazine.] 


Thehe is no more remarkable instance of the 
“cant of criticism,” than the representation 
currently received as distinctive, whereby 
several authors, chiefly residing in the neigh¬ 
bourhood of the lakes, were characterized 
as belonging to one school of poetry. In 
truth, propinquity of residence, and the bonds 
of private friendship, are the only circum¬ 
stances which have ever given the slightest 
colour to the hjqpothesis which marked them 
out as disciples of the same creed. It is 
scarcely possible to conceive individuals more 
dissimilar in the objects of their choice, or in 
the essential properties of their genius. Who, 
for example, can have less in common than 
Wordsworth and Coleridge, if we except 
those faculties which are necessarily the 
portion of the highest order of imaginative 
minds 1 The former of these has sought for 
his subjects among the most ordinary oc¬ 
currences of life, which he has dignified and 
exalted, from which he has extracted the 
holiest essences of good, or over which he 
has cast a cons’ecrating and harmonizing 
light “ which never was by sea or land.” 
The latter, on the other hand, has spread 
abroad his mighty mind, searching for his 
materials through all history and all science, 
penetrating into the hidden soul of the wildest 
superstitions, and selecting the richest spoils 
of time from the remotest ages. Wordsworth 
is all intensity—he sees nothing, but through 
the hallowing medium of his own soul, and 
represents all things calm, silent, and harmo¬ 
nious as his own perceptions. Coleridge 
throws himself into all the various objects 
which he contemplates, and attracts to his 
own imagery their colours and forms. The 
first, seizes only the mighty and the true with 
a giant grasp;—the last has a passionate and 
almost effeminate love of beauty and tender¬ 
ness which he never loses. One looks only 
on the affections in their inmost home, while 
the other perceives them in the lightest and 
remotest tints, which they cast on objects the 
strangest and most barbarous. All the distinc¬ 
tion, in short, between the intense and the ex¬ 
pansive—the severe and the lovely—the phi¬ 
losophic and the magical—really separates these 
great poets, whom it has been the fashion to cen¬ 
sure as united in one heresy. If we cast the 
slightest glance at Southey’s productions, we 
shall find him unlike either of these, his asso¬ 

* Desultory Thoughts in London , Titus and Gisippus, with 
other Poems. By Charles Lloyd, author of Nugae Canorae, 
and translator of Alfieri’s Tragedies, 12mo, 1821. 


ciates—offering a child-like feebleness in con¬ 
trast to Wordsworth’s nerve—and ranging 
through mythologies and strange fantasies, not 
only with less dominion than Coleridge, but 
merely portraying the shapes to which they gave 
existence, instead of discovering the spirit of 
truth and beauty within them. Nor does the 
author before us, often combined with these 
by the ignorance or the artifice of criticism, 
differ less widely from them. Without Words¬ 
worth’s intuitive perception of the profoundest 
truths, or Coleridge’sjeeling of beauty, he has 
a subtile activity of mind which supplies the 
place of the first, and a wonderful power of 
minute observation, which, when directed to 
lovely objects, in a great degree produces the 
effect of the latter. All these three rise on 
some occasions to the highest heaven of thought 
and feeling, though by various processes— 
Wordsworth reaching it at once by the divine 
wingedness of his genius—Coleridge ascend¬ 
ing to it by a spiral track of glory winding on 
through many a circuit of celestial light—and 
Lloyd stepping thither by a firm ladder, like 
that of Jacob, by even steps, which the feet 
of angels have trodden! 

The peculiar qualities of Mr. Lloyd’s genius 
have never been so clearly developed as in the 
chief poem of the work before us. In his 
“Nugae Canorae,” all his thoughts and feel¬ 
ings were overcast by a gentle melancholy, 
which rendered their prominences less distinct, 
as it shed over them one sad and sober hue. 
Even, however, in his most pensive moods, 
the vigorous and restless activity of his intel¬ 
lect might be discerned, curiously inquiring 
for the secret springs of its own distress, and 
regarding its sorrows as high problems worthy 
of the most painful scrutiny. While he exhi¬ 
bited to us the full and pensive stream of emo¬ 
tion, with all the images of soft clouds and de¬ 
licate foliage refiected on its bosom, he failed 
not to conduct us to its deep-seated fountains, 
or to lay open to our view the jagged caverns 
within its banks. Yet here the vast intellec¬ 
tual power was less conspicuous than in his 
last poems, because the personal emotion was 
more intense, single, and pervading. He is 
now, we rejoice to observe, more “ i’ the sun,” 
and consequently, the nice workings of his 
reason are set more distinctly before us. The 
“ Desultory Thoughts in London” embrace a 
great variety of topics, associated in the mind 
of the author with the metropolis, but many 
of. them belonging to those classes of abstrac¬ 
tion which might as fitly be contemplated in a 









LLOYD'S POEMS. 


95 


desert. Among these are “Fate, free-will,! 
foreknowledge absolute,”—the theories of 
manners and morals—the doctrines of ex¬ 
pediency and self-interest—with many specu-1 
lations relating to the imaginative parts of i 
literature, and the influences of religion upon 
them—all of which are grasped by the hand 
of a master. The whole range of contro-1 
versial writing scarcely affords an example of j 
propositions stated so lucidly, qualified so ■ 
craftily, and urged with such exemplary fair- ; 
ness and candour as in this work. It must, 
indeed, be admitted, that the admirable qualities 
of the argument render it somewhat unfit for 
marriage “ with immortal verse.” Philoso¬ 
phical poetry, when most attractive, seizes on 
some grand elemental truths, which it links to 
the noblest material images, and seeks rather 
to send one vast sentiment to the heart through 
the medium of the imagination, than to lead 
the mind by a regular process of logic, to the 
result which it contemplates. Mere didactic 
poetry, as Pope’s Essay on Man, succeeds not 
by the nice balance of reasons, but by decking 
out some obvious common-place in a gorgeous 
rhetoric, or by expressing a familiar sentiment 
in such forcible language as will give it a 
singular charm to all who have felt its justice 
in a plainer garb. In general, the poet, no 
less than the woman, who deliberates, is lost. 
But Mr. Lloyd's effusions are in a great mea¬ 
sure exceptions to this rule;—for though they 
are sometimes “ harsh and crabbed,” and some¬ 
times too minute, they are marked by so 
hearty an earnestness, and adorned ly such 
variety of illustration, and imbued with such 
deep sentiment, that they often enchant while 
they convince us. Although his processes 
are careful, his results belong to the stateliest 
range of truths. Ilis most laborious reason¬ 
ings lead us to elevated views of humanity— 
to the sense of a might above reason itself—to 
those objects which have inspired the most 
glorious enthusiasm, and of which the pro- 
foundest bards have delighted to afford us 
glimpses. It is quite inspiring to follow him 
as he detects the inconsistencies of worldly 
wisdom, as he breaks the shallow reasonings 
of the advocates of expediency into pieces, or 
as he vindicates their prerogatives to faith and 
hope. He leads us up a steep and stony as¬ 
cent, step by step ; but cheers us by many a 
ravishing prospect by the way, and conducts 
£t last to an eminence, not only above the 
mists of error, but where the rainbow comes, 
and whence the gate of heaven may be seen 
as from the Delectable Mountains which Bun- 
yan’s Pilgrim visited. 

We scarcely know how to select a specimen 
which shall do justice to an author whose 
speculations are too vast to be completed 
within a short space, and are connected with 
others by delicate links of thought. We will 
give, however, his vindication of the enthusi¬ 
astic and self-denying spirit, which, however 
associated with absurdity, is the soul of all ; 
religion and virtue. 

i 

Reasoners, that argue of ye know not what, 

Do not, as mystical, my strain deride : 

By farts’ criterion be its doctrine tried. 


The blind as well might doubt of sense and sight; 

l’ernse their lives, who thus have vow’d pursuit 
Of heavenly communion : in despite 
Of all your arguments ye can’t dispute 
Th-ir singleness of heart: except ye fight 
’Gainst facts, ye, self-convicted, must be mute. 

Will ye deny, that they’ve a secret found 
To bafile fate, and heal each mortal wound ? 

Will ye deny, to them alone ’tia given. 

Who its existence, as a faith, embraced 1 
’Tis mainly requisite, to partake of heaven, 

That the heart’s treasures there should first be placed. 
According to thy faith shall it be given 
To thee, with spiritual glories, to be graced. 

As well all facts whence man experience hath, 

As doubt immunities bound up in faith. 

’Tis easy thing to say, that men are knave3; 

’Tis easy thing to say, that men are fools ; 

’Tis easy thing to say, an author raves ; 

Easy, to him who always ridicules 
The incomprehensible, to allege—and saves 
Trouble of farther thought—that oft there rules 
Fanatic feeling in a madman’s brain : 

That half-pretence oft ekes out half-insane. 

We know all this ; but vve know also well. 

These men we speak of tried by every test 
Admissible, all other mer> excel 
In virtue, and in happiness. Since bless'd 
Are they, stern Fate, spite of thy direst spell : 

Infection, loathsome maladies, each pest 
And plague,—for these have they,—should they assail 
A panacea which will never fail. 

God is their rock, their fortress of defence, 

In time of trouble, a defence most holy ; 

For them the wrath of man is impotence ; 

Ilis pride, a bubble ; and his wisdom, folly. 

That “peace” have they—unspeakable intense,— 

“ Which passeth understanding !” Melancholy 
Life’s gauds to them : the unseen they explore : 

Rocted in heaven, to live is—to adore ! 

Ye, that might cavil at these humble lays, 

Peruse the page of child-like Fenelon : 

Hear what the wrapped, transfigured Guion says 
With ills of body such as few have known ;— 

Tedious imprisonment; in youthful days 
To luxuries used, they all aside are thrown ; 

To poverty devoted, she defies 
Its sorest ills, blessing the sacrifice. 

' Was e’er an instance known, that man could taste 
True peace of mind, and spurn religion’s laws'! 

In other things were this alliance traced ; 

Constant coincidence ; effect, and cause. 

We scruple not to call them ; or, at least, 

Condition indispensable, whence draws 
The one, the other. This coincidence 
But grant me here',— and grant the consequence. 

Facts, facts, are stubborn things! We trust the sense 
Of sight, because the experience of each day 
Warrants our trust in it. Now, tell me whence 
It is, no mortal yet could dare to say, 

Man trusted in his God for his defence, 

And was confounded 1 cover’d with dismay ? 

Loses he friends? Religion dries his tears! 

Loses he life ? Religion calms his fears ! 

Loses he health? Religion balms his mind, 

And pains of flesh seem ministers of grace, 

And wait upon a rapture more refined, 

Than e’en in lustiest health e’er found a place. 

Loses he wealth? the pleasure it can find 
He had before renounced ; thus he can trace 
No difference, but that now the heart bestows 
What through a hand less affluent scantier flows. 

He too as much enjoys the spectacle 
Of good, when done by others as by him: 





9G 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


I.oses lie fame ? the honour he loves well 
Is not of earth, but that which seraphim 
Might prize ! Loses he liberty ? his cell, 

And all its vaults, echo his rapturous hymn : 

He feels as free as freest bird in air! 

His heaven-shrined spirit finds heaven everywhere! 

’Tis not romance which we are uttering! No; 

Thousands of volumes each word’s truth attest! 
Thousands of souls redeem’d from all below 
Can bring a proof, that, e’en while earthly guest, 

’Tis possible for man that peace to know, 

Which maketh him impassive to the test 
Of mortal sufferance'! Many and many a martyr 
Has found this bound up in religion’s charter. 

Pleasure, or philosophical or sensual, 

Is not, ought not to be, man’s primary rule ; 

We often feel bound by a law potential 
To do those things which e’en our reasons fool. 

God, and he only, sees the consequential; 

The mind well nurtured in religion’s school 
Feels that He only—to whom all’s obedient— 

Has right to guide itself by the expedient. 

Duty is man’s first law, not satisfaction ! 

That satisfaction comes from this perform’d 
We grant! But should this be the prime attraction 
That led us to performance, soon inform’d 
By finding that we’ve miss’d the meed of action, 

We shall confess our error. Oft we’re warm’d, 

By a strong spirit we cannot restrain, 

To deeds, which make all calculation vain. 

Had Regulus reason’d, whether on the scale 
Of use , in Rome, his faculties would most, 

Or Carthage—patriotism’s cause avail, 

He never had resumed his fatal post. 

Brutus, Virginius had they tried by tale 
Their counlry-’s cause, had never been her boast. 

Yet had it not these self-doom’d heroes seen, 

Rome “ the eternal city,” ne’er had been! 

Shall Christ submit upon the cross to bleed, 

And man for all he does a reason ask I 
Have martyrs died, and confessors, indeed, 

That he must seek a ichy for every task ? 

If it be so, to prate we’ve little need 
Of this enlighten’d age! Take off the mask ! 

If it be so, and ye’ll find this our proud age, — 

Its grand climacterick past is in its dotage. 

Thy name, Thermopylae, had ne’er been heard, 

Were not the Greeks wiser than our wise men. 

I grant, that heaven alone to man transferr’d. 

When he would raise up states for history’s pen, 

This more than mortal instinct! Yet absurd 
It is (because, perhaps, our narrower ken 
Their heights cannot descry; yea, and a curse 
’Twill bring) to make a theory of the worse. 

A theory for a declining race ! 

No, let us keep at least our lips from lies ; 

If we have forfeited Trtith’s soaring grace, 

Let us not falsify her prodigies. 

We well may wear a blush upon our face, 

From her past triumphs so t’ apostatize 
In deeds ; but let us not with this invent 
An infidelity of argument. 

Go to Palmyra’s ruins ; visit Greece, 

Behold ! The wrecks of her magnificence 
Seem left, in spite of man, thus to increase 
The sting of satire on his impotence. 

As to betray how soon man’s glories cease j 
Tombs, time defying, of the most pretence 
But only make us feel with more surprise, 

How mean the things they would immortalize! 

The following is only a portion of a series 
of reminiscences equally luxurious and in¬ 
tense, and which are attended throughout by 


that vein of reflection which our author never 
loses : 

Oh, were the eye of youth a moment ours! 

When every flower that gemm’d the various earth 
Brought down from Heaven enjoyment’s genial showers. 

And every bird, of everlasting mirth 
Prophesied to us in romantic bowers ! 

Love was the garniture, whose blameless birth 
Caused that each filmy web where dew-drops trembled, 
The gossamery haunt of elves resembled! 

We can remember earliest days of spring, 

When violets blue and white, and primrose pale, 

Like callow nestlings ’neath their mother’s wing 
Each peep’d from under the broad leaps green veil. 
When streams look’d blue; and thin clouds clustering 
O’er the wide empyrean did prevail, 

Rising like incense from the breathing world, 

Whose gracious aspect was with dew impearl’d. 

When a soft moisture, steaming everywhere, 

To the earth’s countenance mellower hues imparted; 
When sylvan choristers self-poised in air, 

Or perched on bows, in shrilly quiverings darted 
Their little raptures forth ; when the warm glare 

(While glancing lights backwards and forwards started. 
As if with meteors silver-sheathed ’twere flooded) 

Sultry, and silent, on the hill’s turf brooded. 

Oh in these moments we such joy have felt, 

As if the earth were nothing but a shrine ; 

Where all, or awe inspired or made one melt 
Gratefully towards its architect divine! 

Father ! in future (as I once have dwelt 
Within that very sanctuary of thine 
When shapes, and sounds, seem’d as but modes of Thee!) 
That with experience gain’d were heaven to me! 

Oft in the fulness of the joy ye give, 

Oh, days of youth! in summer’s noon-tide hours, 

Did I a depth of quietness receive 
From insects’ drowsy hum, that all my powers 
Would baffle to portray ! Let them that live 
In vacant solitude, speak from their bowers 
What nameless pleasures letter’d ease may cheer, 

Thee, Nature ! bless’d to mark with eye and ear !— 

Who can have watch’d the wild rose’ blushing dye. 

And seen what treasures its rich cups contain; 

Who, of soft shades the fine variety, 

From white to deepest flush of vermeil stain ? 

Who, when impearl’d with dew-drop’s radiancy 
Its petals breathed perfume, while he did strain 
His very being, lest the sense should fail 
T’ imbibe each sweet its beauties did exhale ? 

Who, amid lanes, on eve of summer days, 

Which sheep brouse, could the thicket’s wealth behold T 
The fragrant honey-suckle’s bowery maze I 
The furze bush, with its vegetable gold? 

In every satin sheath that helps to raise 
The fox-glove’s cone, the figures manifold 
With such a dainty exquisiteness wrought?— 

Nor grant that thoughtful love they all have taught? 

The daisy, cowslip, each have to them given— 

The wood anemone, the strawberry wild, 

Grass of Parnassus, meek as star of even:— 

Bright, as the brightening eye of smiling child, 

And bathed in blue transparency of heaven, 

Veronica ; the primrose pale, and mild;— 

Of charms (of which to speak no tongue is able) 
Intercommunion incommunicable! 

I had a cottage in a Paradise ! 

’Twere hard to enumerate the charms combined 
Within the little space, greeting the eyes, 

Its unpretending precincts that confined. 

Onward, in front, a mountain stream did rise 
Up, whose long course the fascinated mind 
(So apt the scene to awaken wildest themes) 

Might localize the most romantic dreams. 




LLOYD’S POEMS. 


97 


When winter torrents. Ivy the rain and snow, 

Surlily dashing down the hills, were fed, 

Its mighty mass of waters seem’d to flow 
With deafening course precipitous: its bed 
Rocky, such steep declivities did show 
That towards us with a rapid course it sped, 

Broken by frequent falls ; thus did it roam 
In whirlpools eddying, and convulsed with foam. 

Flank’d were its banks with perpendicular rocks, 

Whose scars enormous, sometimes gray and bare, 

And sometimes clad with ash and gnarled oaks, 

The birch, the hazel, pine, and holly were. 

Their tawny leaves, the sport of winters’ shocks, 

Oft o’er its channel circled in the air; 

While, on their tops, and midway up them, seen, 
Lower’d cone-like firs and yews in gloomiest green. 

So many voices from this river came 
In summer, winter, autumn, or the spring; 

So many sounds accordant to each frame 
Of Nature’s aspect, (whether the storm’s wing 
Brooded on it, or pantingly, and tame, 

The low breeze crisp’d its waters) that, to sing 
Half of their tones, impossible ! or tell 
The listener’s feelings from their viewless spell. 

When fires gleam’d bright, and when the curtain’d room, 
Well stock’d with books and music’s implements, 
When children’s faces, dress’d in all the bloom 
Of innocent enjoyments, deep content’s 
Deepest delight inspired ; when nature’s gloom 
To the domesticated heart presents 
(By consummate tranquillity possest) 

Contrast, that might have stirr’d the dullest breast; 

Yes,—in such hour as that—thy voice I’ve known, 

Oh, hallow’d stream !—fitly so named—(since tones 
Of deepest melancholy swell’d upon 
The breeze that bore it)—fearful as the groans 
pf fierce night spirits ! Yes, when tapers shone 
Athwart the room (when, from their skyey thrones 
Of ice-piled height abrupt, rush’d rudely forth, 

Riding the blast, the tempests of the North;) 

Thy voice I’ve known to wake a dream of wonder! 

For though ’twas loud, and wild with turbulence, 

And absolute-as is the deep-voiced thunder, 

Such fine gradations mark’d its difference 
Of audibility r , one scarce could sunder 
Its gradual swellings from the influence 
Of harpJEolian, when, upon the breeze, 

Floats in a stream its plaintive harmonies. 

One might have thought, that spirits of the air 
Warbled amid it in an undersong; 

And oft one might have thought, that shrieks were there 
Of spirits, driven for chastisement along 
The invisible regions that above earth are. 

All species seem’d of intonation (strong 
To bind the soul, Imagination rouse,) 

Conjured from preternatural prison-house. 

But when the heavens are blue, and summer skies 
Are pictured in thy wave’s cerulean glances; 

Then thy crisp stream its course so gayly plies, 

Trips on so merrily in endless dances, 

Such low sweet tone, fit for the time, does rise 
From thy swift course, methinks, that it enhances 
The hue of flowers which decorate thy banks, 

While each one’s freshness seems to pay thee thanks. 

Solemn the mountains that the horizon close. 

From whose drear verge thou seem’st to issue forth : 
Sorcery might fitly dwell, one could suppose, 

(Or any wondrous spell of heaven or earth, 

Which e’en to name man’s utterance not knows,) 

Amid the forms that mark thy place of birth. 

Thither direct your eye, and you will find 
All that excites the imaginative mind ! 

The tale of Titus and Gisippus, which fol¬ 
lows, while it is very interesting as a story, 
13 


exhibits the same great intellectual power and 
ceaseless activity of thought, which character¬ 
ize the Thoughts in London. Mr. Lloyd has 
taken the common incident of one lover re¬ 
signing his mistress to another, and the names 
of his chief characters from Boccaccio, but, in 
all other respects, the poem is original. Its 
chief peculiarity is the manner in which it 
reasons upon all the emotions which it por¬ 
trays, especially on the progress of love in the 
soul, with infinite nicety of discrimination, not 
unlike that which Shakspeare has manifested 
in his amatory poems. He accounts for the 
finest shade of feeling, and analyzes its essence, 
with the same care, as though he were de¬ 
monstrating a proposition of Euclid. He is as 
minute in his delineation of all the variations 
of the heart, as Richardson was in his narra¬ 
tives of matters of fact;—and, like him, thus 
throws such an air of truth over his statements, 
that we can scarcely avoid receiving them as 
authentic history. At the same time, he con¬ 
ducts this process with so delicate a hand, and 
touches his subjects with so deep a reverence 
for humanity, that he teaches us to love our 
nature the more from his masterly dissection. 
By way of example of these remarks, we will 
give part of the scene between a lover who 
long has secretly been agitated by a passion 
for the betrothed mistress of his friend, and the 
object of his silent affection whom he has just 
rescued from a watery grave—though it is 
not perhaps the most beautiful passage of the 
poem: 

He is on land ; on safe land is he come : 

Sophronia’s head he pillows on a stone : 

A death-like paleness hath usurp’d her bloom ; 

Her bead falls lapsing on his shoulder. None 
Were there to give him aid ! lie fears her doom 
Is seal’d for evermore! At last a groan 
Burst from her livid lips, and then the word 
“Titus” he heard, or fancied that he heard!— 

Where was he then 1 From death to life restored! 

From hell to heaven ! To rapture from despair! 

His hand he now lays on that breast adored ; 

And now her pulse he feels; and now—(beware. 
Beware, rash youth!) his lips draw in a hoard 
Of perfume from her lips, which though they were 
Still closed, yet oft the inarticulate sigh, 

Issuing from thence, he drank with ecstasy. 

Still were they cold ; her hands were also cold ; 

Those hands he chafed and, perhaps to restore 
To her chill, paly lips their warmth, so bold 
He grew, he kiss’d those pale lips o’er and o’er. 

Nay, to revive in their most perfect mould 
Their wonted rubeous hue, he dared do more ;— 

He glued his mouth to them, and breathed his breath 
To die with her, or rescue her from death.— 

Thou art undone, mad youth! The fire of love 
Burn’d so intensely in his throbbing veins, 

That, had she been a statue, he might prove 
A new Pygmalion, and the icy chains 
Of death defy. Well then might he remove 
The torpor which her o’er-wrought frame sustains.— 

If sweet, revival from such menaced death ; 

More sweet , revival by a lover’s breath! 

She feels the delicate influence through her thrill, 

And with seal’d eye lay in a giddy trance, 

Scarce dare she open them, when had her will 
On this been bent, she felt the power to glance 
Their lights on him. No, with a lingering skill— 

Oh, blame her not!—she did awhile enhance 



98 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


The bliss of that revival, by a feign'd 
Or half-feign’d show of conflict still sustain’d. 

At last, she look’d l—They looked !—Eye met with eye ! 

The whole was told ! The lover and the loved, 

The adored, and the adorer, ecstasy 
Never till then experienced—swiftly proved !- 
Thanks for his aid were a mean courtesy l 
They were forgotten ! Transport unreproved, 

This was his guerdon ; this his rich reward! 

An hour’s oblivion with Sophronia shared ! 

Then all the world was lost to them, in one 
Fulness of unimaginable bliss!— 

Infinity was with them ! and the zone 
Unbound whence Venus sheds upon a kiss 
Nectareous essences, and raptures known 
Ne’er save to moments unprepared as this ! 

And in that earnest impulse did they find 
Peace and intensity, alike combined ! 

To frame such joy, these things are requisite; 

A lofty nature ; the exalting stress 
Of stimulating trials, which requite, 

And antecedent sorrows doubly bless ; 

Consummate sympathies, which souls unite ; 

And a conjuncture, whence no longer press 
Impulses—long as these delights we prove— 

From one thing foreign to the world of love. 

This could not last! Not merely would a word ;— 

A gesture would, a look, dissolve the charm !— 

Could home be mention’d nor the thought restored, 

To her remembrance of Gisippus’ warm 
And manly love ? Bless’d be ye with your hour 
Of transient bliss, and be ye safe from harm, 

Ye fond, fond pair! But think not joys so high 
Can be inwoven with reality ! 


At last a swift revulsion through her frame 
And o’er her countenance stole : a sudden pause 1 
Her eyes which had imbibed a piercing flanfe, 

Fell at once rayless ; and her bosom draws 
One in-pent sigh ; one look imploring came 
O’er her fine face ! Titus knew well the cause 
Of this so sudden change : he dared not speak ; 

He dared not move ; dared not its reasons seek! 

Some minutes they were silent. Night advanced ; 

Titus towards himself Sophronia press’d, 

But dumb he stood ; upwards she faintly glanced 
A look upbraiding, and upon his breast— 

Gently reclining—lay like one entranced! 

No longer was happiness her guest. 

She starts ! She cries “Gisippus !” all is told ! 

Cold fell the word, on bosoms still more cold! 

They rose and crept along in silentness— 

Sophronia reach’d her home, but nothing said. 

E’en to her mother, of her past distress. 

Her threshold past not Titus—Thence he fled. 

Soon as in safety he the maid did guess, 

Like to a madman madden’d more with dread! 

Nor ever of this night, or of its spell 
Of mighty love, did he breathe a syllable f 

We now take leave of Mr. Lloyd with pecu¬ 
liar gratitude for the rich materials for thought 
with which a perusal of his poems has en¬ 
dowed us. We shall look for his next appear¬ 
ance before the public with anxiety;—assured 
that his powers are not even yet fully deve¬ 
loped to the world, and that he is destined to 
occupy a high station among the finest spirits 
of his age. 


MR. OLDAKER ON MODERN IMPROVEMENTS. 


[New Monthly Magazine.] 


Mr. Editor: — I trust that even in this age of 
improvement you will suffer one of the oldest 
of the old school to occupy a small space in 
your pages. A few words respecting myself 
will, however, be necessary to apologize for 
my opinions. Once I was among the gayest 
and sprightliest of youthful aspirants for fame 
and fortune. Being a second son, I was bred 
to the bar, and pursued my studies with great 
vigour and eager hope, in the Middle Temple. 
I loved, too, one of the fairest of her sex, and 
was beloved in return. My toils were sweet¬ 
ened by the delightful hope that they would 
procure me an income sufficient for the credi¬ 
table support of the mistress of my soul. Alas ! 
at the very moment when the unlooked-for 
devise of a large estate from a distant relative 
gave me affluence, she for whom alone I de¬ 
sired wealth, sunk under the attack of a fever 
into the grave. Religion enabled me to bear her 
loss with firmness, but I determined, for her 
sake, ever to remain a bachelor. Although 
composed and tranquil, I felt myself unable to 
endure the forms, or to taste the pleasures of 
London. I retired to my estate in the country, 
where I have lived for almost forty years in 


the society of a maiden sister, happy if an old 
friend came for a few days to visit me, but 
chiefly delighting to cherish in silence the re¬ 
membrance of my only love, and to anticipate 
the time when I shall be laid beside her. At 
last, a wish to settle an orphan nephew in my 
own profession, has compelled me to visit the 
scenes of my early days, and to mingle, for a 
short time, with the world. My resolution once 
taken, I felt a melancholy pleasure in the ex¬ 
pectation of seeing the places with which I 
was once familiar, and which were ever linked 
in my mind with sweet and blighted hope. 
Every change has been to me as a shock. I 
have looked at large on society too, and there 
I see little in brilliant innovation to admire. 
Returned at last to my own fire-side, I sit down 
to throw together a few thoughts on the new 
and boasted Improvements, over which I mourn. 
If I should seem too querulous, let it be re¬ 
membered, that my own happy days are long 
past, and that recollection is the sole earthly 
joy which is left me. 

My old haunts have indeed suffered compa¬ 
ratively small mutation. The princely hall of. 
the Middle Temple has the same venerable as- 







MODERN IMPROVEMENTS. 


99 


pect as when, in my boyish days, I felt my 
heart beating with a strange feeling of mingled 
pride and reverenee on becoming one of its 
members. The fountain yet plays among the 
old trees, which used to gladden my eye in 
spring for a few days with their tender green, 
to become so prematurely desolate. But the 
Iront of the Inner Temple hall, upon the 
terrace, is sadly altered for the worse. When 
I first knew it, the noble solidity of its appear¬ 
ance, especially of the figure over the gateway, 
cut massively in the stone, carried the mind 
back into the deep antiquity of the scene. 
Now the whole building is white-washed and 
plastered over, the majestic entrance supplied 
by an arch of pseudo-gothic, and a new library 
added, at vast cost, in the worst taste of the 
modern antique. The view from the garden 
is spoiled by that splendid nuisance, the Water¬ 
loo Bridge. Formerly we used to enjoy the 
enormous bend of the river, far fairer than the 
most marvellous work of art; and while our eyes 
dwelt on the placid mirror of water, our imagi¬ 
nation went over it, through calm and majestic 
windings, into sweet rural scenes, and far in¬ 
land bowers. Now the river appears only an 
oblong lake, and the feeling of the country once 
let into the town by that glorious avenue of 
crystal, is shut out by. a noble piece of mere 
human workmanship! But nature never 
changes, and some of her humble works are 
ever found to renew old feelings within us, not¬ 
withstanding the sportive changes of mortal 
fancy. The short grass of the Temple garden is 
the same as when forty years ago I was accus¬ 
tomed to refresh my weary eyes with its green¬ 
ness. There I have strolled again ; and while I 
bent my head downwards and fixed my eyes 
on the thin blades and the soft daisies, I felt as 
I had felt when last I walked there—all be¬ 
tween was as nothing, or a feverish dream— 
and I once more dreamed of the Seals, and of 
the living Sophia!—I felt—but I dare not trust 
myself on this subject farther. 

The profession of the law is strangely altered 
since the days of my youth. It was then surely 
more liberal, as well as more rational, than I 
now find it. The business and pleasure of a 
lawyer were not entirely separated, as at pre¬ 
sent, when the first is mere toil, and the second 
lighter than vanity. The old stout-hearted 
pleaders threw a jovial life into their tremen¬ 
dous drudgeries, which almost rendered them 
delightful. Wine did but open to them the 
most curious intricacies of their art: they rose 
from it, like giants refreshed, to grapple with 
the sternest difficulties, and rejoiced in the en¬ 
counter. Their powers caught a glow in the 
severity of the struggle, almost like that arising 
from strong exertion of the bodily frame. Nor 
did they disdain to enjoy the quaint jest, the 
far-fetched allusion, or the antique fancy, which 
sometimes craftily peeped out on them amidst 

their laborious researches. Poor T-W- 

was one of the last of the race. He was the 
heartiest and most romantic of special pleaders. 
Thrice happy was the attorney who could engage 
him to a steak or broiled fowl in the old coffee 
room in Fleet-street, were I have often met him. 
How would he then dilate, in the warmth of his 
heart, on all his professional triumphs—now 


| chuckling over the fall of a brother into a trap 
set artfully for him in the fair guise of liberal 
pleading—now whispering a joy past joy in a 
stumble of the Lord Chief Justice himself, 
among the filmy cords drawn about his path ! 
When the first bottle was despatched, arrived 
the time for his wary host to produce his 
papers in succession, to be drawn or settled 
by the joyous pleader. The well-lauded inspi¬ 
ration of a poet is not more genuine than that 
with which he then was gifted. All his nice 
discernment—all his vast memory—all his 
skill in drawing analogies and discerning prin¬ 
ciples in the “great obscurity” of the Year 
Books—were set in rapid and unerring action. 
On he went—covering page after page, his pen 
“in giddy mazes running,” and his mind 
growing subtler and more acute with every 
glass. How dextrously did he then glide 
through all the strange windings of the case, 
with a sagacity which never failed, while he 
garnished his discourse with many a legal 
pun and learned conceit, which was as the 
light bubble on the deep stream of his know¬ 
ledge! He is gone!—and I find none to re¬ 
semble him in this generation—none who thus 
can put a spirit into their work, which may 
ttfake cobweb-sophistries look golden, and 
change a laborious life into one long holi¬ 
day ! 

In the greater world, I have observed, with 
sorrow, a prevailing disregard of the past, and 
a desire to extol the present, or to expatiate in 
visionary prospects of the future. I fear this 
may be traced not so much to philanthropy as 
to self-love, which inspires men with the wish 
personally to distinguish themselves as the 
teachers and benefactors of their species, in¬ 
stead of resting contented to share in the* vas* 
stock of recollections and sympathies which 
is common to all. They would fain persuade 
us that mankind, created “ a little lower than 
the angels,” is now for the first time “crowned 
with glory and honour;” and they exultingly 
point to institutions of yesterday for the means 
to regenerate the earth. Some, for example, 
pronounce the great mass of the people, through 
all ages, as scarcely elevated above the brutes 
which perish, because the arts of reading, 
writing, and arithmetic, were not commonly 
diffused among them; and on the diffusion of 
these they ground their predictions of a golden 
age. And were there then no virtuous hardi¬ 
hood, no guileless innocence, no affections 
stronger than the grave, in that mighty lapse 
of years which we contemptuously stigmatize 
as dark? Are disinterested patriotism, con¬ 
jugal love, open-handed hospitality, meek self- 
sacrifice, and chivalrous contempt of danger 
and of death, modern inventions ? Has man’s 
great birth-right been in abeyance even until 
now ? Oh, no ! The Chaldaean shepherd did 
not cast his quiet gaze through weeks and 
years in vain to the silent skies. He knew 
not, indeed, the discoveries of science, which 
have substituted an immense variety of figures 
on space and distance, for the sweet influences 
of the stars; yet did the heavens tell to him 
the glory of God, and angel faces smile on 
him from the golden clouds. Book-learning 
is, perhaps, the least part of the education of 





100 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


the species. Nature is the mightiest and the 
kindliest of teachers. The rocks and unchang¬ 
ing hills give to the heart the sense of a dura¬ 
tion beyond that of the perishable body. The 
flowing stream images to the soul an everlast¬ 
ing continuity of tranquil existence. “ The 
brave o’er-hanging firmament,” even to the 
most rugged swain, imparts some conscious¬ 
ness of the universal brotherhood of those over 
whom it hangs. The affections ask no leave 
of the understanding to “glow and spread and 
kindle,” to shoot through all the frame a tre¬ 
mulous joy, or animate to holiest constancy. 
We taste the dearest blessedness of earth in 
our childhood, before we have learned to ex¬ 
press it in mortal language. Life has its uni¬ 
versal lessons far beyond human lore. Kind¬ 
ness is as cheering, sorrow as purifying, and 
the aspect of death as softening to the ignorant 
in this world’s wisdom, as to the scholar. The 
purest delights grow beneath our feet, and all 
who will stoop may gather them. While sages 
lose the idea of the Universal Parent in their 
subtleties, the lowly “feel after Him and find 
Him.” Sentiment precedes reason in point of 
•time, and is a surer guide to the noblest reali¬ 
ties. Thus man hopes, loves, reveres, and en- 
jo}'s, without the aid of writing or of the press 
to inspire or direct him. Many of his feelings 
are even heartier and more genuine before he 
has learned to describe them. He does not 
perpetually mistake words for things, nor cul¬ 
tivate his faculties and affections for a dis¬ 
cerning public. His aspirations “ are raised, 
not marked.” If he is gifted with divine ima¬ 
gination, he may “ walk in glory and in joy 
beside his plough upon the mountain side,” 
without the chilling idea that he must make 
the most of his sensations to secure the ap¬ 
plause of gay saloons or crowded theatres. 
The deepest impressions are worn out by the 
multiplication of their copies. Talking has 
almost usurped the place of acting and of feel¬ 
ing ; and the world of authors seem as though 
their hearts were but paper scrolls, and ink, 
instead of blood, were flowing in their veins. 
“The great events with which old story rings, 
seem vain and hollow.” If all these evils will 
not be extended by what is falsely termed the 
Education of the Poor, let us at least be on our 
guard lest we transform our peasantry from 
men into critics, teach them scorn instead of 
humble hope, and leave them nothing to love, 
to revere, or to enjoy ! 

The Bible Society, founded and supported, 
no doubt, from the noblest motives, also puts 
forth pretensions which are sickening. Its ad¬ 
vocates frequently represent it as destined to 
change all earth into a paradise. That a com¬ 
plete triumph of the principles of the Bible 
would bring in the happy state which they look 
for can never be disputed ; but the history of 
our religion affords no ground for anticipating 
such a result from the unaided perusal of its 
pages. Deep and extensive impressions of the 
truths of the gospel have never been made by 
mere reading, but always by the exertions of 
living enthusiasm in the holy cause. Provi¬ 
dence may, indeed, in its inscrutable wisdom, 
impart new energy to particular instruments ; 
but there appears no sufficient indication of 


such a change as shall make (he printed BibU 
alone the means of regenerating the species. 
“An age of Bibles” may not be an age of 
Christian charity and hope. The word of God 
may not be revered the more by becoming a 
common book in every cottage, and a drug in 
the shop of every pawnbroker. It w^s surely 
neither known nor revered the less when it 
was a rare treasure, when it was proscribed 
by those who sat in high places, and its torn 
leaves and fragments were cherished even 
unto death. In those days, when a single 
copy chained to the desk of the church was 
alone in extensive parishes, did it diffuse less 
sweetness through rustic hearts than now, 
when the poor are almost compelled to possess 
it 1 How then did the villagers flock from dis¬ 
tant farms, cheered in their long walks by 
thoughts not of this world, to converse for a 
short hour with patriarchs, saints, and apostles! 
How did they devour the venerable and well- 
w r orn page with tearful eyes, or listen delighted 
to the voice of one gifted above his fellow r s, 
who read aloud the oracles of celestial wisdom! 
Whai ideas of the Bible must they have en¬ 
joyed, who came many a joyful pilgrimage to 
hear or to read it! Yet even more precious was 
the enjoyment of those who, in times of perse¬ 
cution, snatched glances in secret at its pages, 
and thus entered, as by stealth, into the para¬ 
disiacal region, to gather immortal fruits and 
listen to angel voices. The word of God was 
dearer to them than house, land, or the “ ruddy 
drops which warmed their hearts.” Instead of 
the lamentable weariness and disgust with 
which the young now too often turn from the 
perusal of the Scriptures, they heard with mute 
attention and serious joy the histories of the Old 
Testament and the parables of the New. They 
heard with revering sympathy of Abraham re¬ 
ceiving seraphs unawares—of Isaac walking 
out at eventide to meditate, and meeting the 
holy partner of his days—of Jacob’s dream, and 
of that immortal Syrian Shepherdess, for v r hose 
love he served a hard master fourteen years, 
which seemed to him but a few days—of Joseph 
the beloved, the exile, the tempted, and the 
forgiver—of all the wonders of the Jewish 
story—and of the character and sufferings of 
the Messiah. These things were to them at 
once august realities, and surrounded with a 
dream-like glory from afar. “Heaven lay 
about them in their infancy.” They preserved 
the purity—the spirit of meek submission—the 
patient confiding love of their childhood in 
their maturest years. The}', in their turn, in¬ 
stilled the sweetness of Christian charity, drop 
by drop, into the hearts of their offspring, and 
left their example as a deathless legacy. 
Surely this was better than the dignified pa¬ 
tronage now courted for the Scriptures, or the 
pompous eulogies pronounced on them by 
rival orators! The reports of anniversaries 
of the Bible Society are often, to me, inexpres¬ 
sibly nauseous. The word of God is praised 
in the style of eulogy employed on a common 
book by a friendly reviewer. It is evidently 
used as a theme to declaim on. But the praise 
of the Bible is almost overshadowed by the 
flatteries lavished on the nobleman or county 
member who has condescended to preside, and 




A CHAPTER ON “TIME.” 


101 


which it is the highest ambition of the speak¬ 
ers ingeniously to introduce and to vary. Happy 
is he who can give a new turn to the compli¬ 
ment, or invent a new alliteration or antithesis 
for the occasion ! The copious nonsense of the 
successful orators is even more painful than 
the failures of the novices. After a string of 
false metaphors and poor conceits, applauded 
to the echo, the meeting are perhaps called on 
to sympathize with some unhappy debutant, 
whose sense of the virtues of the chairman 
proves too vast for his powers of expression ; 
and with Miss Peachum in the Beggars’ Opera, 
to lament “that so noble a youth should come 
to an untimely end.” Alas ! these exhibitions 
have little connection with a deep love of the 
Bible, or with real pity for the sufferings of man. 
W ere religious tyranny to render the Scriptures 
scarce, and to forbid their circulation, they 
would speedily be better prized and honoured 
than when scattered with gorgeous profusion, 
and lauded by nobles and princes. 

The Society for the Suppression of Mendicity 
is another boasted institution of these cold- 
hearted days. It would annihilate the race of 
beggars, and remove from the delicate eye the 
very form and aspect of misery. Strange in¬ 
fatuation ! as if an old class of the great fa¬ 
mily of man might be cut off without harm ! 
“All are but parts of one stupendous whole,” 
bound together by ties of antique sympathy, of 
v r hich the lowest and most despised are not 
without their uses. In striking from society 
a race ’whom we have, from childhood, been 
accustomed to observe, a vast body of old as¬ 
sociations and gentle thoughts must necessarily 
be lost for ever. The poor mendicants whom 
we would banish from the earth, are the best 
sinecurists to whose sustenance we contribute. 
In the great science—the science of humanity 
—they not rarely are our first teachers: they 
affectingly remind us of our own state of mu¬ 
tual dependance ; bring sorrow palpably before 
the eyes of the prosperous and the vain ; and 
prevent the hearts of many from utterly “ losing 
their nature.” They give, at least, a salutary 
disturbance to gross selfishness, and hinder it 


from entirely forming an ossified crust about 
the soul. We see them too with gentle interest, 
because we have always seen them, and were 
accustomed to relieve them in the spring-time 
of our days. And if some of them are what 
the world calls imposters, and literally “ do be¬ 
guile us of our tears,” and our alms, those 
tears are not shed, nor those alms given, in 
vain. If they have even their occasional re- 
vellings and hidden luxuries, we should rather 
rejoice to believe that happiness has every¬ 
where its nooks and corners which we do not 
see; that there is more gladness in the earth 
than meets the politician’s, gaze; and that for¬ 
tune has her favours, “ secret, sweet, and pre¬ 
cious,” even for those on whom she seems 
most bitterly to frown. Well may that divinest 
of philosophers, Shakspeare, make Lear reply 
to his daughters, who had been speaking in the 
true spirit of modern improvements : 

“ O reason not the need : our basest beggars 
Are in the poorest thing superfluous : 

Allow not nature more than nature needs, 

Man’s life is cheap as beasts!” 

There are many other painful instances in 
these times of that “ restless wisdom” which 
“has a broom for ever in its hand to rid the 
world of nuisances.” There are, for example, 
the plans of Mr. Owen, with his infallible 
recipes for the formation of character. Virtue 
is not # to be forced in artificial hot-beds, as he 
proposes. Rather let it spring up where it will 
from the seed scattered throughout the earth, 
and rise hardly in sun and shower, while the 
“free mountain winds have leave to blow 
against it.” But I feel that I have already 
broken too violently on my habits of dreamy 
thought, by the asperity into which I now and 
then have fallen. Let me then break off at 
once, with the single expression of a hope, that 
this “bright and breathing world” may not be 
changed into a Penitentiary by the efforts of 
modern reformers. 

I am, Sir, 

Your hearty well-wisher, 
FRANCIS OLDAKER. 


A CHAPTER ON TIME.” 

BEING AN ATTEMPT TO THROW NEW LIGHT ON AN OLD SUBJECT. 

[New Monthly Magazine.] 


* (Ve know what we are,” said poor Ophelia, 
* but we know not what we may be.” Perhaps 
she would have spoken with a nicer accuracy 
had she said, “ we know what we have been." 
Of our present state w*e can, strictly speaking, 
Know nothing. The act of meditation on our¬ 
selves, however quick and subtle, must lefer 
to the past, in which alone we can truly be 
said to live. Even in the moments of intensest 
enjoyment, our pleasures are multiplied by the 
quick-revolving images of thought; we leel 


the past and future in each fragment of the in¬ 
stant, even as the flavour of every drop of 
some delicious liquid is heightened and pro¬ 
longed on the lips. It is the past only which 
we really enjoy as soon as we become sensible 
of duration. Each bygone instant of delight 
becomes rapidly present to us, and “ bears a 
glass which shows us many more.” This is 
the great privilege ofa meditative being—never 
properly to have any sense of the present, but 
to feel the great realities as they pass away, 

i 2 






102 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


casting their delicate shadows on the fu¬ 
ture. 

Time, then, is only a notion—unfelt in its 
passage—a mere measure given by the mind 
to its own past emotions. Is there, then, any 
abstract common measure by which the infi¬ 
nite variety of intellectual acts can be meted— 
any real passage of years which is the same 
to all—any periodical revolution, in which all 
who have lived, have lived out equal hours ? 
Is chronology any other than a fable, a “tale 
that is told 7” Certain outward visible actions 
have passed, and certain seasons have rolled 
over them; but has the common idea of 
time, as applicable to these, any truth higher 
or surer than those infinite varieties of dura¬ 
tion which have been felt by each single heart ? 
Who shall truly count the measure of his own 
days—much more scan the real life of the mil¬ 
lions around him ? 

The ordinary language of moralists respect¬ 
ing time shows that we really know nothing 
respecting it. They say that life is fleeting 
and short; why, humanly speaking, may they 
not as well affirm that it is extended and last¬ 
ing? The words “short” and “long” have 
only meaning when used comparatively; and 
to what can we compare or liken this our hu¬ 
man existence ? The images of fragility—thin 
vapours, delicate flowers, and shadows cast 
from the most fleeting things—which we em¬ 
ploy as emblems of its transitoriness, really 
serve to exhibit its durability as great in com¬ 
parison with their own. If life is short, com¬ 
pared with the age of some fine animals, how 
much longer is it than that of many, some of 
whom pass through all the varieties of youth, 
maturity, and age, during a few hours, accord¬ 
ing to man’s reckoning, and, if they are en¬ 
dowed with memory, look back on their early 
minutes through the long vista of a summer’s 
day! An antediluvian shepherd might com¬ 
plain with as much apparent reason of the 
brevity of his nine hundred years, as we of our 
threescore and ten. He would find as little to 
confute or to establish his theory. There is 
nothing visible by which we can fairly reckon 
the measure of our lives. It is not just to com¬ 
pare them with the duration of rocks and hills, 
which have withstood “ a thousand storms, a 
thousand thunders;” because where there is 
no consciousness, there is really no time. The 
power of imagination supplies to us the place 
of ages. We have thoughts which “date be¬ 
yond the pyramids.” Antiquity spreads around 
us her mighty wings. We live centuries in 
contemplation, and have all the sentiment of 
six thousand years in our memories:— 

“The wars tee too remember of King Nine, 

And old Assaracus and Ibycus divine.” 

Whence, then, the prevalent feeling of the 
brevity of our life? Not, assuredly, from its 
comparison with any thing which is presented 
to our senses. It is only because the mind is 
formed for eternity that it feels the shortness 
of its earthly sojourn. Seventy years, or se¬ 
venty thousand, or seven, shared as the com¬ 
mon lot of a species, would seem alike suffi¬ 
cient to those who ha/1 no sense within them 


of a being which should have no end. When 
this sense has been weakened, as it was amidst 
all the exquisite forms of Grecian mythology, 
the brevity of life has been forgotten. There 
is scarcely an allusion to this general senti¬ 
ment, so deep a spring of the pathetic, through¬ 
out all the Greek tragedies. It will be found 
also to prevail in individuals in proportion 
as they meditate on themselves, or as they 
nurse in solitude and silence the instinct of the 
Eternal. 

The doctrine that Time exists only in re¬ 
membrance, may serve to explain some ap¬ 
parent inconsistencies in the language which 
we use respecting our sense of its passage. 
We hear persons complaining of the slow 
passage of time, when they have spent a'single 
night of unbroken wearisomeness, and won¬ 
dering how speedily hours, filled with pleasure 
or engrossing occupations, have flown; and 
yet we all know how long any period seems 
which has been crowded with events or feel¬ 
ings leaving a strong impression behind them. 
In thinking on seasons of ennui we have no¬ 
thing but a sense of length—we merely re¬ 
member that we felt the tedium of existence ; 
but there is really no space in the imagination 
filled up by the period. Mere time, unpeopled 
with diversified emotions or circumstances, is 
but one idea, and that idea is nothing more 
than the remembrance of a listless sensation. 
A night of dull pain and months of lingering 
weakness are, in the retrospect,nearly the same 
thing. When our hands or our hearts are busy, 
we know nothing of time—it does not exist for 
us; but as soon as we pause to meditate on 
that which is gone, we seem to have lived long 
because we look back through a long series 
of events, or feel them at once peering one 
above the other like ranges of distant hills. 
Actions or feelings, not hours, mark all the 
backward course of our being. Our sense of 
the nearness to us of any circumstance in our 
life is determined on the same principles—not 
by the revolution of the seasons, but by the 
relation which the event bears in importance 
to all that has happened to us since. To him 
who has thought, or done, or suffered much, 
the level days of his childhood seem at an im¬ 
measurable distance, Air off as the age of chi¬ 
valry, or as the line of Sesostris. There are 
some recollections of such overpowering vast¬ 
ness, that their objects seem ever near; their 
size reduces all intermediate events to nothing; 
and they peer upon us like “ a forked moun¬ 
tain, or blue promontory,” which, being far 
off, is yet nigh. How different from these ap¬ 
pears some inconsiderable occurrence of more 
recent date, which a flash of thought redeems 
for a moment from long oblivion ;—which is 
seen amidst the dim confusion of half-forgotten 
things, like a little rock lighted up "by a 
chance gleam of sunshine afar in the mighty 
waters! 

What immense difference is there, then, in 
the real duration of men’s lives! He lives 
longest of all who looks back oftenest, whosa 
life is most populous of thought or action, and 
on every retrospect makes the vastest picture. 
The man who does not meditate has no real 
consciousness of being. Such a on« g-'ec tv 



A CHAPTER ON “TIME.” 


103 


death as to a drunken sleep; he parts with ex¬ 
istence wantonly, because he knows nothing 
of its value. Mere men of pleasure are, there¬ 
fore the most careless of duelists, the gayest 
of soldiers. To know the true value of being, 
yet to lay it down for a great cause, is a pitch 
of heroism which has rarely been attained by 
man. That mastery of the fear of death which 
is so common among men of spirit, is nothing 
but a conquest over the apprehension of dying. 
It is a mere victory of nerve and muscle. 
Those whose days have no principle of conti¬ 
nuity—who never feel time but in the shape 
of ennui—may quit the world for sport or for 
honour. But he who truly lives, who feels the 
past and future in the instant, whose days are 
to him a possession of majestic remembrances 
and golden hopes, ought not to fancy himself 
bound by such an example. He may be in¬ 
spired to lay down his life, when truth or vir¬ 
tue shall demand so great a sacrifice ; but he 
will be influenced by mere weakness of reso¬ 
lution, not by courage, if he suffer himself to 
be shamed, or laughed, or worried out of it! 

Besides those who have no proper con¬ 
sciousness of being, there are others even per- 
naps more pitiable, who are constantly irritated 
by the knowledge that their life is cut up into 
melancholy fragments. This is the case of all 
the pretending and the vain; those who are 
ever attempting to seem what they are not, or 
to do what they cannot; who live in the lying 
breath of contemporary report, and bask out a 
sort of occasional holiday in the glimmers of 
public favour. They are ahvays in a feverish 
struggle, yet they make no progress. There 
is no dramatic coherence, no unity of action, 
in the tragi-comedy of their lives. They have 
hits and brilliant passages perhaps, which 
may come on review before them in straggling 
succession; but nothing dignified or massive, 
tending to one end of good or evil. Such are 
self-fancied poets and panting essayists, who 
live on from volume to volume, or from ma¬ 
gazine to magazine, who tremble with nervous 
delight at a favourable mention, are cast down 
by a sly alliteration or satirical play on their 
names, and die of an elaborate eulogy “ in aro¬ 
matic pain.” They begin life once a quarter, 
or once a month, according to the will of their 
publishers. They dedicate nothing to poste¬ 
rity ; but toil on for applause till praise sick¬ 
ens, and their “life’s idle business” grows too 
heavy to be borne. They feel their best days 
passing away without even the effort to build 
up an enduring fame; and they write an elegy 
on their own weaknesses! They give their 
thoughts immaturely to the world, and thus 
spoil them for themselves for ever. Their 
own earliest, and deepest, and most sacred 
feelings become at last dull common-places, 
which they have talked of and written about 
till they are glad to escape from the theme. 
Their days are not “linked each to each by 
natural piety,” but at best bound together in 
forgotten volumes. Better, far better than this, 
is the lot of those whose characters and pre¬ 
tensions have little “mark of likelihood;”— 
whose days are filled up by the exercises of 
honest industry, and who, crti looking back, re¬ 
cognise their lives only by the turns of their 


fortune, or the events which have called forth 
their affections. Their first parting from home 
is indelibly impressed on their minds—their 
school-days seem to them like one sweet April 
of shower and sunshine—their apprenticeship 
is a long week ot toil;—but then their first 
love is fresh to them as yesterday, and their 
marriage, the births of their children, and of 
their grand-children, are events which mark 
their course even to old age. They reach their 
infancy again in thought by an easy process, 
through a range of remembrances few and 
simple, but pure, and sometimes holy. Yet 
happier is the lot of those who have one great 
aim ; who devote their undivided energy to a 
single pursuit; who have one idea of practical 
or visionary good, to which they are wedded. 
There is a harmony, a proportion, in their 
lives. The Alchemist of old, labouring with 
undiminished hope, cheering his solitude with 
dreams of boundless wealth,andyet workingon, 
could not be said to live in vain. His life was 
continuous—one unbroken struggle—one ar¬ 
dent sigh. There is the same unity of interest 
in the life of a great verbal scholar, or of a true 
miser ; the same singleness of purpose, which 
gives solidity to floating minutes, hours,- and 
years. 

The great Lawyer deserves an eminent rank 
among true .livers. We do not mean a politi¬ 
cal adventurer, who breathes feverishly amidst 
the contests, the intrigues, and petty triumphs 
of party; nor a dabbler in criticism, poetry, 
or the drama; nor even a popular nisi-prius 
advocate, who passes through a succession of 
hasty toils and violent excitements to fortune 
and to oblivion. But we have respect to the 
real dull plodder—to him who has bidden an 
early “ Farewell to his Muse,” if he ever had 
one: who anticipates years of solitary study, 
and shrinks not back; who proceeds, step by 
step, through the mighty maze with a cheerful 
heart, and counts on his distant success with 
mathematical precision. His industry and 
self-denial are powers as true as fancy or elo¬ 
quence, and he soon learns to take as hearty a 
pleasure in their exercise. His retrospect is 
vast and single—of doubt solved, stoutest books 
mastered, nicest webs disentangled, and all 
from one intelligible motive which grows old 
with him, and, though it “ strengthened with 
his strength,” will not diminish with his de¬ 
cline. It is better in the end to have had the 
pathway of life circumscribed and railed in by 
forms and narrow observances, than to have 
strayed at will about the vast field open to 
human enterprise, in the freest and most grace¬ 
ful wanderings; because in the latter case we 
cannot trace our road again, or call it over; 
while in the first, we see it distinctly to the 
end, and can linger in thought over all the 
spots where our feet have trodden. The “old 
names” bring back the “old instincts” to our 
hearts. Instead of faint sympathies with a 
multitude of things, a kind of small partner-' 
ship with thousands in certain general dogmas 
and speculations, we have all our own past in¬ 
dividual being as a solid and abiding posses¬ 
sion. 

A metaphysician who thinks earnestly and 
intensely for himself, may truly be said to live 






104 


TALFOUED’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


long. He has this great advantage over the 
most felicitous inventor of machinery, or the 
most acute of scientific inquirers, that all his 
discoveries have a personal interest; he has 
his existence for his living study ; his own 
heart is the mighty problem on which he medi¬ 
tates, and the “ exceeding great reward” of his 
victories. In a moment of happy thought he 
may attain conquests, “ compared to which the 
laurels which a Caesar reaps are weeds.” 
Years of anxious thought are rewarded by the 
attainment of one triumphant certainty, which 
immediately gives a key to the solution of a 
thousand pregnant doubts and mysteries, and 
enables him almost to “ curdle a long life into 
an hour.” When he has, after long pursued and 
baffled endeavours, rolled aside some huge diffi¬ 
culty which lay in his path, he will find beneath 
it a passage to the bright subtleties of his nature, 
through which he may range at will, and 
gather immortal fruits, like Aladdin in the sub¬ 
terranean gardens. He counts his life thus not 
only by the steps which he has taken, but 
by the vast prospects which, at every turn 
of his journey, have recompensed his toils, 
over which he has diffused his spirit as he 
went on his way rejoicing. We will conclude 
this article with the estimate made of life from 
his own experience by one of the most pro¬ 
found and original of thinkers. 

“It is little, it is short, it is not worth having 
—if we take the last hour, and leave out all 
that has gone before, which has been one way 
of looking at the subject. Such calculators 
seem to say that life is nothing when it is over; 
and that may, in their sense, be true. If the 
old rule —Respice finem —were to be made abso¬ 
lute, and no one could be pronounced fortunate 
till the day of his death, there are few among 
us whose existence would, upon such condi¬ 
tions, be much to be envied. But this is not a 
fair view of the case. A man’s life is his 
whole life, not to the last glimmering snuff of 
the candle; and this I say is considerable, and 
not a little matter, whether we regard its plea¬ 
sures or its pains. To draw a peevish con¬ 
clusion to the contrary, from our own super¬ 
annuated desires of forgetful indifference, is 


about as reasonable as to say, a man never 
was young because he has grown old, or never 
lived because he is now dead. The length or 
agreeableness of a journey does not depend on 
the few last steps of it, nor is the size of a 
building to be judged of from the last stone 
that is added to it. It is neither the first nor 
the last hour of our existence, but the space 
that parts these two—not our exit, nor our en¬ 
trance upon the stage, but what we do feel, and 
think while there—that we are to attend to in 
pronouncing sentence upon it. Indeed, it would 
be easy to show that it is the very extent of 
human life, the infinite number of things con¬ 
tained in it, its contradictory and fluctuating 
interests, the transition from one situation to 
another, the hours, months, years, spent in one 
fond pursuit after another ; that it is, in a word, 
the length of our common journey, and the 
quantity of events crow'ded into it, that, baffling 
the grasp of our actual perception, make it 
slide from our memory, and dwindle into no¬ 
thing in its own perspective. It is loo mighty 
for us, and we say it is nothing! It is a specs 
in our fancy, and yet what canvas would be 
big enough to hold its striking groups, its end¬ 
less objects ! It is light as vanity ; and yet if 
all its weary moments, if all its head and heart¬ 
aches were compressed into one, what forti¬ 
tude would not be overwhelmed with the blow! 
What a huge heap, a ‘huge dumb heap/ of 
wishes, thoughts, feelings,anxious cares, sooth¬ 
ing hopes, loves, joys, friendships, it is com¬ 
posed of! How many ideas and trains of sen¬ 
timent, long, deep, and intense, often pass 
through the mind in one day’s thinking or read¬ 
ing for instance ! How many such days are 
there in a year, how many years in a long life, 
still occupied with something interesting—still 
recalling some old impression—still recurring 
to some difficult question, and making progress 
in it, every step accompanied with a sense of 
power, and every moment conscious of ‘ the 
high endeavour or the glad success;” for the 
mind seizes only on that which keeps it em¬ 
ployed, and is wound up to a certain pitch of 
pleasurable excitement by the necessity of 
its own nature.”— Hazlitl’s Table Talk , Essay 6. 


ON THE PROFESSION OF THE BAR, 

[London Magazine.] 


There is no pursuit in life which appears 
more captivating at a distance than the profes¬ 
sion of the bar, as it is followed and rewarded 
in English courts of justice. It is the great 
avenue to political influence and reputation ; 
its honours are among the most splendid 
which can be attained in a free state; and its 
emoluments and privileges are exhibited as 
prizes, to be contested freely by all its mem¬ 
bers. Its annals celebrate many individuals 
who have risen from the lowest ranks of the 
people, by fortunate coincidence, or by patient 
labour, to wealth and station, and have become 


the founders of honourable families. If the 
young aspirant perceives, even in his hasty 
and sanguine glance, that something depends 
on fortuitous circumstances^ the conviction 
only renders the pursuit more inviting, by add¬ 
ing the fascinations of a game of chance to 
those of a trial of skill. If he is forced to con¬ 
fess that a sacrifice of principle is occasionally 
required of the candidate for its most lucrative 
situations, he glories in the pride of untempted 
virtue, and pictures himself generously resist¬ 
ing the bribe which would give him riches and 
authority in exchange for conscious rectitude 







ON THE PROFESSION OF THE BAR. 


and the approbation of the good and wise. 
While he sees nothing in the distance, but 
glorious success or more glorious self-denial, 
he feels braced for the severest exertion; 
nerved for the fiercest struggle; and regards 
every throb of an impatient ambition as a 
presage of victory. 

Not only do the high offices of the profession 
wear an inviting aspect, but its level course 
has much to charm the inexperienced observer. 
It affords perpetual excitement; keeps the fa¬ 
culties in unceasing play; and constantly ap¬ 
plies research, ingenuity, and eloquence, to the 
actual business of life. A Court of Nisi Prius 
is a sort of epitome of human concerns, in 
which advocates are the representatives of the 
hopes and fears, the prejudices, the affections, 
and the hatreds of others, which stir their blood, 
yet do not endanger their fortune or their peace. 
The most important interests are committed 
to their discretion, and the most susceptible 
feelings to their forbearance. They enjoy a 
fearful latitude of sarcasm and invective, with 
an audience ready to admire their sallies, and 
reporters eager to circulate them through the 
land. Their professional dress, which might 
else be ludicrous, becomes formidable as the 
symbol of power; for, with it, they assume the 
privilege of denouncing their adversaries, con¬ 
founding witnesses, and withstanding the judge. 
If the matter on which they expatiate is not 
often of a dignified nature or productive of 
large consequences, it is always of real im¬ 
portance; not a mere theme for display, or a 
parliamentary shadow. The men whom they 
address are usually open to receive impres¬ 
sions, either from declamation or reasoning, 
unlike other audiences who are guarded by 
system, by party, or by interest, against the 
access of conviction. They are not confined 
to rigid logic, or to scholastic sophistry, but 
may appeal to every prejudice, habit, and feel¬ 
ing, which can aid their cause or adorn their 
harangue; and possess a large store of popu¬ 
lar topics always ready for use. They do not 
contend for distant objects, nor vainly seek to 
awaken an interest for futurity, but struggle for 
palpable results which immediately follow their 
exertions. They play an animating game for 
verdicts w'th the resources of others, in which 
success is full of pleasure, and defeat is rarely 
attended with personal disgrace or injury. 
This is their ordinary vocation ; but they have, 
or seem to have, a chance of putting forth all the 
energies of their mind on some high issue; and 
of vindicating their moral courage, perchance 
by rescuing an innocent man from dishonour 
and the grave, or by standing, in a tumultuous 
season, between the frenzy of the people and 
the encroachments of their enemies, and pro¬ 
tecting the constitutional rights of their fellows 
with the sacred weapons of the laws. What 
dream is more inspiring to a youth of sanguine 
temperament than that of conducting the de¬ 
fence of a man prosecuted by the whole force 
of the state ? He runs over in thought the 
hurried and feverish labour of preparation : the 
agitations of the heart quelled by the very 
magnitude of the endeavour and the peril; and 
imagines himself settled and bent up to his 
own part in the day of trial—the low tremulous 
14 


beginning, the gradually strengthening ^ 
ance; the dawning recognition of sympatn_, 
excited in the men on whose lips the issue 
hangs; till the whole world of thought and 
feeling seems to open full of irresistible argu¬ 
ment and happy illustrations; till his reason¬ 
ings become steeped in passion ; and he feels 
his cause and his triumph secure. To every 
enthusiastic boy, flattered by the prophecies 
of friends, such an event appears possible; and, 
in the contemplation, wealth, honour, and long 
life, seem things of little value. 

But the state of anticipation cannot last for 
ever. The day arrives, when the candidate 
for forensic opportunities and honours must 
assume the gown amidst the congratulations 
of his friends, and attempt to realize their 
wishes. The hour is, no doubt, happy, in 
spite of some intruding thoughts ; its festivi¬ 
ties are not less joyous, because they wear a 
colouring of solemnity; it is one more season 
of hope snatched from fate, inviting the mind 
to bright remembrance, and rich in the honest 
assurances of affections and sympathy. It 
passes, however, as rapidly as its predecessors, 
and the morrow sees the youth at Westminster, 
pressing a wig upon aching temples, and taking 
a fearful survey of the awful bench where the 
judges sit, and the more awful benches crowd¬ 
ed with competitors who have set out with as 
good hopes, who have been encouraged by as 
enthusiastic friends, and who have as valid 
claims to success as he. Now then, having 
allowed him to enjoy the foretastes of prospe¬ 
rity, let us investigate what are the probabili¬ 
ties that he will realize them. Are they, in 
any degree, proportioned to his intellectual 
powers and accomplishments'? Is the posses¬ 
sion of some share of the highest faculties of 
the mind, which has given him confidence, 
really in his favour? These questions we will 
try to solve. We may, perhaps, explain to the 
misjudging friends of some promising aspirant, 
who has not attained the eminence they ex¬ 
pected, why their prophecies have been un¬ 
fulfilled. They think that, with such powers 
as they know him to possess, there must be 
some fault which they did not perceive; some 
want of industry, or perseverance; but there 
was probably none ; and they may rather seek 
for the cause of failure in the delicacy of feel¬ 
ing which won their sympathy, or in the genius 
which they were accustomed to admire. 

Men who take a cursory view of the pro¬ 
fession are liable to forget how peculiarly it is 
situated in relation to those who distribute its 
business. These are not the people at large ; 
not even the factitious assemblage called the 
public ; not scholars, nor readers, nor thinkers, 
nor admiring audiences, nor sages of the Jaw, 
but simply attorneys. In this class of men are, 
of course, comprised infinite varieties of know¬ 
ledge and of worth; many men of sound learn¬ 
ing and honourable character; many who are 
tolerably honest and decorously dull; some 
who are acute and knavish; and more who are 
knavish without being acute. Respectable as 
is the station of attorneys, they are, as a body, 
greatly inferior to the bar in education and en¬ 
dowments; and yet on their opinion, without 
appeal, the fate of the members of the profes- 



TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


depends. It can scarcely be matter of 
surprise that they do not always perceive, as 
by intuition, the accurate thinking, the delicate 
satire, the playful fancy, or the lucid eloquence, 
which have charmed a domestic circle, and 
obtained the applause of a college, even if 
these were exactly the qualities adapted to 
their purposes. They will never, indeed, con¬ 
tinue to retain men who are obviously unequal 
to their duty; but they have a large portion of 
business to scatter, which numbers, greatly 
differing in real power, can do equally well; 
rnd some junior business, which hardly re¬ 
quires any talent at all. In some cases, there- 
ore, they are virtually not only judges but 
patrons, who, by employing young men early, 
give them not merely fees, but courage, prac¬ 
tice, and the means of becoming known to 
others. From this extraordinary position 
arises the necessity of the strictest etiquette in 
form, and the nicest honour in conduct, which 
strangers are apt to ridicule, but which alone 
can prevent the bar from being prostrated at 
the feel of an inferior class. But for that bar¬ 
rier of rule and personal behaviour, solicitors 
would be enabled to assume the language and 
manner of dictators; and no barrister could 
retain at once prosperity and self-respect, ex¬ 
cept the few, whose reputations for peculiar 
skill are so well established, as to render it in¬ 
dispensable to obtain their services. It is no 
small proof of the spirit and intelligence of 
the profession, as a body, that these qualities 
are able to preserve them in a station of ap¬ 
parent superiority to those on whom they vir¬ 
tually depend. They frequent the places of 
business; they follow the judges from town to 
town, and appear ready to undertake any side 
of any cause; they sit to be looked at,, and 
chosen, day after day, and year after year ; and 
yet by force of professional honour and gentle¬ 
manly accomplishments, and by these alone, 
they continue to be respected by the men who 
are to decide their destiny. But no rule of eti¬ 
quette, however strict, and no feelings of de¬ 
licacy, however nice and generous, can pre¬ 
vent a man, who has connections among 
attorneys, from possessing a great advantage 
over his equals who have none. It is natural 
that his friends should think highly of him, and 
desire to assist him, and it would be absurd to 
expect that he should disappoint them by re¬ 
fusing their briefs, when conscious of ability 
to do them justice. Hence a youth, born and 
educated in the middle ranks of life, who is 
able to struggle to the bar, has often a far bet¬ 
ter chance of speedy success than a gentle¬ 
man of rank and family. This consideration 
may lesson the wonder, so often expressed, at 
the number of men who have risen to eminence 
in the law from comparatively humble stations. 
Without industry and talent, they could have 
done little; but, perhaps, with both these they 
might have done less, if their early fame had 
not been nurtured by those to whom their suc¬ 
cess was a favourite object, and whose zeal 
afforded them at once opportunity and stimulus 
which to more elevated adventurers are want¬ 
ing. 

Let us now examine a little ihekind of talent 
by which success at the bar will most probably 


be obtained ; as, from want of attention to this 
point much disappointment frequently springs. 
We will first refer to the lower order of busi¬ 
ness—that by which a young man usually be¬ 
comes known—and then take a glance at the 
Court of Nisi Prius, as it affords scope to the 
powers of leaders. We pass over at present 
that class of men who begin to practice as spe¬ 
cial pleaders, and after acquiring reputation, 
are called late in life with a number of clients 
who have learned to value them as they de¬ 
serve. These have chosen a safe and honour¬ 
able course; but the general reader would find 
little to excite his interest in a view of their 
silent and laborious progress. We speak rather 
of the business of Criminal Courts and of Ses¬ 
sions, in which young men generally make 
first trial of their powers, and of the more 
trivial and showy order of causes which it 
may sometimes be their good or ill fortune to 
lead. 

In this description of business, it must be 
obvious to every one that there is no scope for 
the higher powers and more elegant accom¬ 
plishments of the mind. But it is not so ob¬ 
vious, though not less true, that these are often 
encumbrances in the way of the advocate. 
This will appear, if we glance at the kind of 
work he has to perform, the jury whom he is 
to influence, or the audience by whom he is 
surrounded. Even if the successful perform¬ 
ance of his duty, without regard to appear¬ 
ances, be his only aim, he will often find it 
necessary to do something more painful than 
merely to lay aside his most refined tastes. To 
succeed with the jury, he must rectify his un¬ 
derstanding to the level of theirs; to succeed 
with the audience, he must necessarily go still 
lower; because, although there are great com¬ 
mon themes on which an advocate may raise 
almost any assembly to his own level, and 
there are occasions in which he may touch on 
universal sympathies, these rarely, if ever, 
arise in the beginning of his professional life. 
On those whom he has to impress, the fine al¬ 
lusion, the happy conceit, the graceful sophis¬ 
try, w’hich will naturally occur to his mind, 
would be worse than lost. But though he may 
abstain from these, how is he to find, on the 
inspiration of the instant, the matter which 
ought to supply their place ? Can he, accus¬ 
tomed to enjoy the most felicitous turns of ex¬ 
pression, the airiest wit, the keenest satire, 
think in a moment of a joke sufficiently broad 
and stale to set the jury box and the galleries 
in a roar? Has he an instinctive sense of 
what they will admire ? If not, he is wrong to 
wonder that he makes less impression than 
others, who may be better able to sacrifice the 
refinements which he prizes, and ought not to 
grudge them the success which fairly and na¬ 
turally follows their exertions. 

The chief duties of a junior are to examine 
witnesses; to raise legal objections; and, in 
smaller cases, to address juries. We will 
show in each of these instances how much a 
man of accurate perceptions and fastidious 
tastes must overcome before he can hope for 
prosperity. 

The examination of witnesses, in chief gene¬ 
rally requires little more than a clear voice, a 




ON THE PROFESSION OF THE BAR. 


107 


tolerable degree of self-possession, a superficial 
knowledge of the law of evidence, and an ac¬ 
quaintance with the matter to which the wit¬ 
nesses are expected to speak. There are cri¬ 
tical cases, it is true, in which it is one of the 
most important duties which an advocate can 
perform, and requires all the dexterity and 
address of which he is master. But the more 
popular work, and that which most dazzles by¬ 
standers, is cross-examination, to which some men 
attribute the talismanic property of bringing 
falsehood out of truth. In most cases, before 
an intelligent jury it is mere show. When it 
is not founded on materials of contradiction, or 
directed to obtain some information which the 
witness will probably give, it proceeds on the 
assumption that the party interrogated has 
sworn an untruth, which he may be induced 
to vary. But, in the great majority of cases, 
the contrary is the fact, and therefore the usual 
consequence of speculative cross-examining is 
the production of a more minute and distinct 
story than was originally told. Still a jury may 
be puzzled ; an effect may be produced ; and as, 
in cases of felony, an advocate is not permitted 
to make a speech, he must either cross-examine 
or do nothing.* Here then, taste, feeling, and 
judgment, are sometimes no trifling hindrances. 
A man who has a vivid perception of the true 
relation of things cannot, without difficulty, 
force himself to occupy the attention of the 
court for an hour with questions which he 
feels have no bearing on the matter substan¬ 
tially in issue. Even when he might confound 
the transaction, the clearness of his own head 
will scarcely permit him to do the business 
well. He finds it hard to apply his mind to 
the elaborate scrutiny of a labourer’s dinner or 
dress, the soundness of his sleep or the slow¬ 
ness of his cottage time-piece; and he hesitates 
to place himself exactly on a level with the wit¬ 
ness who comes to detail them. His discretion 
may sometimes restrain him from imitating the 
popular cross-examiners of the day, but his in¬ 
capacity will prevent him stilloftener,until,like 
them, 1 e : as become thoroughly habituated to 
the intellectual atmosphere of the court in 
which he practises. 

In starting and arguing points of law, a 
deep knowledge of law, and a faculty of clear 
and cogent reasoning, might seem qualities of 
the highest value. At Nisi Prius, before a 
Judge, they are so, or rather would be if the 
modern course of transacting business left a 
junior any opportunity to use them. But they 
are very far from producing unmingled advan¬ 
tage before inferior tribunals. As the bench 
is not often filled with magistrates profoundly 
learned, futile objections are almost as likely 
to succeed as good ones, and sometimes more 
so, because those to whom they are addressed 
have a vague notion of law as something full 
of mere arbitrary quiddities, and therefore 
likely to be found in direct opposition to com¬ 
mon sense. Now, a man who is himself igno¬ 
rant of a science is obviously better fitted to 
hit the fancies of the respectable gentlemen 
who entertain such a notion, than one who 
thoroughly understands its rules. The first 

* This has been happily altered since the publication 
of this copy. 


will raise objections where the last would be 
silent; or will defend them with the w r armth 
of honest conviction, where the lawyer would 
introduce them with hesitation and abandon 
them without a struggle. When a man has 
nothing really to say, he is assisted greatly by 
confusion of language, and a total want of ar¬ 
rangement and grammar. Mere stupidity, ac¬ 
companied by a certain degree of fluency, is 
no inconsiderable power. It enables its pos¬ 
sessor to protract the contest long after he is 
beaten, because he neither understands his own 
case, nor the arguments by which he has been 
answered. It is a weapon of defence, behind 
which he obtains protection, not only from his 
adversaries, but from the judge. If the learned 
person who presides, wearied out with endless 
irrelevancies, should attempt to stop him, he 
will insist on his privilege to be dull, and ob¬ 
tain the admiration of the audience by his 
firmness in supporting the rights of the bar. 
In these points, a sensitive and acute advocate 
has no chance of rivalling him in the estima¬ 
tion of the by-standers. A young man may, 
indeed, display correctness of thought, depth 
of research, and elegant perspicuity in an ar¬ 
gument on a special case, in the Court of 
King’s Bench; but few will hear and fewer 
listen to him; and he will see the proceedings 
of the day shortly characterized in the news¬ 
paper of the morrow as “ totally destitute of pub¬ 
lic interest,” while the opposite column will be 
filled with an elaborate report of a case of as¬ 
sault at Clerkenwell, or a picturesque account 
of a squabble between a pawnbroker and an 
alderman ! 

To address a jury, even in cases of minor 
importance, seems at first to require talents 
and requirements of a superior kind. It really 
requires a certain degree of nerve, a readiness 
of utterance, and a sufficient acquaintance with 
the ordinary line of illustration used and ap¬ 
proved on similar occasions. A power of 
stating facts, indeed, distinctly and concisely 
is often important to the real issue of the cause; 
but it is not one which the audience are likely 
to appreciate. The man who would please 
them best should omit all the facts of his case, 
and luxuriate in the commonplaces which he 
can connect with it, unless he is able to em¬ 
bellish his statement, and invest the circum¬ 
stances he relates with adventitious importance 
and dignity. An advocate of accurate percep¬ 
tions, accustomed to rate things according to 
their true value, will find great difficulty in 
doing either. Most of the subject matter of 
flourish, which is quite as real to the super¬ 
ficial orator as any thing in the world, is 
thrown far back from his habitual thoughts, 
and hardly retains a place among the lumber 
of his memory. Grant him time for prepara¬ 
tion, and a disposition to do violence to his 
own tastes, in order to acquire popularity, and 
he may approach a genuine artist in the 
factitious ; but, after all, he will run great risk 
of being detected as a pretender. A single 
touch of real feeling, a single piece of concise 
logical reasoning, will ruin the effect of the 
whole, and disturb the well-attuned minds of 
an enlightened jury. Even the topics which 
must be dilated on are often such as would 








108 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


not weigh a feather with an intelligent man, 
out of court, and still oftener give occasion to 
watery amplifications of ideas, which may be 
fairly and fully expressed in a few words. It is 
obvious, therefore, that the more an advocate’s 
mind is furnished with topics rather than with 
opinions or thoughts, the more easy will he 
find the task of addressing a jury. A sense 
of truth is ever in his way. It breaks the fine, 
flimsy, gossamer tissue of his eloquence, which, 
but for this sturdy obstacle, might hang sus¬ 
pended on slender props to glitter in the view 
of fascinated juries. If he has been accustomed 
to recognise a proportion between words and 
things, he will, with difficulty, screw himself 
up to describe a petty affray in the style of 
Gibbon, though to his client the battle of Holy- 
well-lane may seem more important than the 
fall of the Roman Empire. If he would en¬ 
rapture the audience when intrusted to open a 
criminal case of importance, he should begin 
with the first murder; pass a well-rounded 
eulogy on the social system; quote Blackstone, 
and the Precepts of Noah ; and dilate on crime, 
conscience, and the trial by jury; before he 
begins to state the particular facts which he 
expects to prove. He disdains to do this—or 
the favourite topics never occur to his mind 
even to be rejected; and, instead of winning 
the admiration of a county, he only obtains a 
conviction ! In addition to an inward repug¬ 
nance to solemn fooling, men of sterling sense 
have also to overcome the dread of the criti¬ 
cism of others whose opinion they value, be¬ 
fore they can descend to the blandishments of 
popular eloquence. It is seldom, therefore, that 
a young barrister can employ the most effica¬ 
cious mode of delighting his audience, unless 
he is nearly on a par with them, and thinks, in 
honest stupidity, that he is pouring forth pathos 
and wisdom. There is, indeed, an excessive 
proneriess to adopt the tone of the moment, an 
easiness of temperament, which sometimes may 
enable him to make a display in a trifling mat¬ 
ter without conscious degradation ; but he is 
ashamed of his own success when he grows 
cool, and was reduced by excessive sympathy 
to the level of his hearers only for the hour. 
Let no one, therefore, hastily conclude that the 
failure of a youth, to whom early opportunities 
are given, is a proof of essential inferiority to 
successful rivals. It may be, indeed, that he 
is below his business ; for want of words does 
not necessarily imply plenitude of ideas, nor 
is abstinence from lofty prosings and stale jests 
conclusive evidence of wit and knowledge; 
but he is more probably superior to his voca¬ 
tion—too clear in his own perceptions to per¬ 
plex others; too much accustomed to think to 
make a show without thought; and too deeply 
impressed with admiration of the venerable 
and the affecting readily to apply their attri¬ 
butes to the miserable facts he is retained to 
embellish. 

Let us now take a glance at that higher 
sphere in which a barrister moves when he 
has overcome the difficulties of his profession, 
and has obtained a share of leading business 
in the superior courts. Here it must at once 
be conceded that considerable powers are neces¬ 
sary, and that the deficiencies which aided the 


aspiring junior will no longer prevail. The 
learning and authority of the judge, and the 
acuteness of established rivals, not only pre¬ 
vent the success of those experiments, which 
ignorance only can hazard, but generally stifle 
them in the birth. The number and variety of 
causes, and the business-like manner in which 
they are conducted, restrain the use of fine 
spun rhetoric to a few special occasions. A 
man who would keep any large portion of 
general practice must have industry and reten¬ 
tive memory; clearness of mind enough to 
state facts with distinctness, and to arrange 
them in lucid order; a knowledge of law suffi¬ 
cient for the discovery of any point in his own 
favour, and for the supply of a ready evasion 
of any suggested by his opponent; quick¬ 
ness and comprehension of intellect to see the 
whole case on both sides at one view; and 
complete self-possession and coolness, without 
which all other capacities will be useless. 
These are essentials for Nisi Prius practice; 
but does it give scope to no higher faculties ? 
Is there nothing in human intellect which may 
be allowed to adorn, to lighten, and to inspire 
the dull mass of facts and reasonings? Was 
Erskine no more than a distinct narrator, a 
tolerable lawyer, and a powerful reasoner 
on opposing facts? Can no higher praise 
be given to Scarlett, who sways the Court 
of King’s Bench like a monarch, and to 
Brougham,* whose eloquence sheds terror 
into the enemies of freedom throughout the 
world ? We will answer these questions as 
well as we are able. 

For the highest powers of the mind which 
can be developed in eloquence even a superior 
court rarely affords room. Some have ascribed 
their absence to a chilling spirit of criticism 
in the legal auditors; but it is really attributa¬ 
ble to the want of fitness in the subjects, and 
in the occasions. The noble faculty of imagi¬ 
nation may, indeed, sometimes be excited to 
produce sublime creations, in the fervour of a 
speech, as justly as in the rage or sorrow of a 
tragedy; but in both the passion must enkindle 
the imagination, not the imagination create the 
passion. The distinction of eloquence from 
other modes of prose composition is, that it is 
primarily inspired by passion, and that it is 
either solely addressed to the feelings, or sways 
the understanding through the medium of the' 
affections. It is only true when it is propor¬ 
tioned to the subject out of which it arises, be¬ 
cause otherwise the passion is but fantastical 
and belongs to the mock heroic. In its course, 
it may edge the most subtle reasonings, point 
the keenest satire, and excite the imagination 
to imbody truth in living images of grandeur 
and beauty ; but its spring and instinct must 
be passion. Nor is this all; it must not only 
be proportioned to the feeling in its author’s 
mind, but to the feeling and intellect of those 
to whom it is addressed. A man of ardent 
temperament may work himself into a state 
of excitation by contemplating things which 
are remote and visionary; he may learn to 
take an enthusiastic interest in the objects of 
his own solitary musings ; but if he brings into 


* Now Lord Brougham. 





ON THE PROFESSION OF THE BAR. 


109 


court the passionate dreams of his study, he 
will invite scorn and make failure certain. 
Not only is there rarely a subject which can 
worthily enkindle such passion as may excite 
imagination, but still more rarely an audience 
who can justify it by receiving it into their 
hearts. On some few occasions, as of great 
political trials, a burning indignation can be 
felt and reflected; the thoughts which the jury 
themselves swell with may be imaged in 
shapes of fire; and the orator may, while 
clothing mighty principles in noble yet fami¬ 
liar shapes, by a felicitous compromise, bring 
grandeur and beauty half way to the audience, 
and raise the audience to a station where they 
can feel their influence. But he must take care 
that he does not deceive himself by his own 
emotions; and mistake the inspiration of the 
study for that of the court. He is safe only 
while he is impelled by the feeling of those 
whom he addresses, and while he keeps fully 
within their view. In ordinary causes, imagi¬ 
nation would not only be out of place, but it 
cannot enter; because its own essence is 
truth, and because it never has part in genuine 
eloquence unless inspired by adequate emo¬ 
tion. The flowers of oratory which are with¬ 
held by fear of contempt, or regarded as mere 
ornaments if produced, are not those which 
grow out of the subject, and are streaked and 
coloured by the feeling of the time; but gaudy 
exotics, leisurely gathered and stuck in out of 
season, and destitute of root. These fantasti¬ 
cal decorations do not prove the existence of 
fervour or of imagination, but the want of both; 
and it is well if they are kept back by the good 
sense of the speaker, or his reasonable fears. 
But while a man, endowed with high faculties, 
cautiously abstains from displaying them on 
inadequate occasions, he will find them too 
often an impediment and a burden. He is in 
danger of timidity from a consciousness of 
power yet unascertained even by himself, and 
from an apprehension lest he should profane 
his long-cherished thoughts by a needless ex¬ 
posure. He is liable to be posed by the re¬ 
currence of some delicate association which 
he feels will not be understood, and modestly 
hesitates on the verge of the profound. He is, 
therefore, less fitted for ordinary business than 
another who can survey his own mental re¬ 
sources at a glance, as a well-ordered armoury, 
and select, without hesitation, the weapon best 
adapted for the struggle. 

Pathos, much oftener than imagination, falls 
within the province of the advocate. But the 
art of exciting pity holds no elevated rank in 
the scale of intellectual power. As employed 
at the bar in actions for adultery, seduction, and 
breach of promise of marriage, ostensibly as a 
means of effecting a transfer of money from 
the purse of the culprit to that of the sufferer, 
it sinks yet lower than its natural place, and 
robs the sorrows on which it expatiates of all 
their dignity. The first of these actions is a 
disgrace to the English character; for the 
plaintiff, who asks for money, has sustained 
no pecuniary loss; and what money does he 
deserve who seeks it as a compensation for 
domestic comfort, at the price of exposing to the 
eedy public all the shamefulparticulars of his 


wife’s crime and of his own disgrace? In the 
other cases, where the party has been injured, 
not only in feeling, but in property or proper¬ 
ty’s value, it is right that redress should be 
given ; and that redress, even when sought in 
the form of damages, may be demanded in a 
tone of eloquent reprobation of villany; but 
the moment the advocate recounts the miseries 
of his client, in order to show how much mo¬ 
ney ought to be awarded, his task is degrading 
and irksome. He speaks of modesty destroyed, 
of love turned to bitterness, of youth blasted in 
its prime, and of age brought down by sorrow 
to the grave; and he asks for money! He 
hawks the wrongs of the inmost spirit, “as 
beggars do their sores,” and unveils the sacred 
agonies of the heart, that the jury may estimate 
the value of their palpitations! It is in vain 
that he urges the specious plea, that no money 
can compensate the sufferer, to sustain the in¬ 
ference that the jury must give the whole sum 
laid in the declaration ; for the inference does 
not follow. Money will not compensate, not 
because it is insufficient in degree but in kind ; 
and, therefore, the consequence is—not that 
great damages should be given, but that none 
should be claimed. When once money is con¬ 
nected with the idea of mental grief, by the 
advocate who represents the sufferer, all re¬ 
spect for both is gone. Subjects, therefore, 
of this kind are never susceptible in a court 
of law of the truest pathetic; and the topics 
to which they give occasion are somewhat 
musty. 

If, however, the highest powers of the mind 
are rarely brought into action in a Court of 
Nisi Prius, its more ordinary faculties are re¬ 
quired in full perfection, and readiness for use. 
To an uninitiated spectator, the course of a 
leader in considerable business seems little 
less than a miracle. He opens his brief with 
apparent unconcern; states complicated facts 
and dates with marvellous accuracy; conducts 
his cause with zeal and caution through all its 
dangers; replies on the instant, dexterously 
placing the adverse features of each side in 
the most favourable position for his client; 
and, having won or lost the verdict for which 
he has struggled, as if his fortune depended 
on the issue, dismisses it from his mind like 
one of the spectators. The next cause is 
called on; the jury are sworn; he unfolds 
another brief and another tale, and is instantly 
inspired with a new zeal, and possessed by a 
new set of feelings; and so he goes on till the 
court rises, finding time in the intervals of 
actual exertion to read the newspaper, and 
talk over all the scandal of the day ! This is 
curious work; it obviously requires all the 
powers to which we have referred as essen¬ 
tial, and the complete absorption of the mind 
in each successive case. Besides these, there 
are two qualities essential to splendid success 
—a pliable temperament, and that compound 
quality, or result of several qualities, called 
tact , in the management of a cause. 

, To the first of these we have already alluded, 
in its excessive degree, as supplying a young 
barrister with the capability of making a dis¬ 
play on trivial occasions ; but, when chastened 
by time, it is a most important means of sue- 





110 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


cess in the higher departments of the profes¬ 
sion. An advocate should not only throw his 
mind into the cause, but his heart also. It is 
not enough that the ingenuity is engaged to 
elicit strength, or conceal weakness, unless 
the sympathies are fairly enlisted on the same 
side. To men of lofty habits of thinking, or 
of cold constitution, this is impossible, unless 
the case is of intrinsic magnitude, or the client 
has been wise enough to supply an artificial 
stimulus in the endorsement on the brief. 
Such men, therefore, are only excellent in pe¬ 
culiar cases, where their sluggish natures are 
quickened, and their pride gratified or disarmed 
by a high issue, or a splendid fee. Persons, 
on the other hand, who are prevented from 
saying “ no,” not by cowardice, but by sym¬ 
pathy ; whose hearts open to all who happen 
to be their companions; whose prejudices 
vanish with a cordial grasp of the hand, or 
melt before a word of judicious tlattery; who 
have a spare fund of warmth and kindness to 
bestow on whoever seeks it; and who, ener¬ 
getic in action, are wavering in opinion, and 
infirm of purpose—will be delighted advocates, 
if they happen also to possess industry and 
nerve. The statement in their brief is enough 
to convert them into partisans, ready to triumph 
in the cause, if it is good, and to cling to it, if 
it is hopeless, as to a friend in misfortune. By 
this instinct of sociality, they are enabled not 
only to throw life into its details, and energy 
into its struggles, but to create for themselves 
a personal interest with the jury, which they 
turn to the advantage of their clients. It has 
often been alleged that the practice of the law 
prepares men to abandon their principles in 
ihe hour of temptation; but it will often ap¬ 
pear, on an attentive survey of their character, 
that the extent of their practice was the effect 
rather than the cause of their inconstancy. 
They are not unstable because they were suc¬ 
cessful barristers, but became successful bar¬ 
risters by virtue of the very qualities which 
render them unstable. They do not yield on 
a base calculation of honour or gain, but be¬ 
cause they cannot resist a decisive compliment 
paid to their talents by the advisers of the 
crown. They are undone by the very trick of 
sympathy which has often moulded them to 
the purposes of their clients, and swayed juries 
to their pleasure. 

But the great power of a Nisi Prius advo¬ 
cate consists of tact in the management of a 
cause. Of this a by-stander sees but little ; if 
the art be consummate, nothing; and he is, 
with difficulty, made to comprehend its full 
value. He hears the cause tried fairly out; 
observes perhaps witnesses on both sides ex¬ 
amined; and thinking the whole merits have 
been necessarily disclosed, he sees no room 
for peculiar skill, except in the choice of topics 
to address to the jury. But a trial is not a 
hearing of all the matters capable of discovery 
which are relevant to the issue, or which 
would assist an impartial mind in forming a 
just decision. It is an artificial mode of de¬ 
termination, bounded by narrow limits, go¬ 
verned by artificial rules, and allowing each 
party to present to the court as much or as 
little of his own case as he pleases. A leader, 


then, has often, on the instant, to select out of 
a variety of matters, precisely those which will 
make the best show, and be least exposed to 
observation and answer; to estimate the pro¬ 
bable case which lies hid in his adversary’s 
brief, and prepare his own to elude its force ; 
to decide between the advantage of producing 
a witness and the danger of exposing him; or, 
if he represents the defendant, to apply evi¬ 
dence to a case new in many of its aspects, or 
take the grave responsibility of offering none. 
Besides the opportunity which the forms and 
mode of trial give to the exercise of skill, the 
laws of evidence afford still greater play for 
ingenuity, and ground for caution. Some of 
these are founded on principle; some on mere 
precedent; some caprice; some on a desire to 
swell the revenue; and all serve to perplex 
the game of Nisi Prius, and give advantages 
to its masters. The power which they exhibit 
among its intricacies is really admirable, and 
may almost be considered as a lower order of 
genius. Its efforts must be immediate; for the 
exigency presses, and the lawyer, like the 
woman, “ who deliberates is lost.” He cannot 
stop to recollect a precedent, or to estimate all 
the consequences of a single step; yet he de¬ 
cides boldly and justly. His tad is, in truth, 
the result of a great number of impressions, 
of which lie is now unconscious, which gives 
him a kind of intuitive power to arrive at once 
at the right conclusion. Its effects do not make 
a show in the newspapers: but they are very 
eloquent in the sheriff’s office, and in the rolls 
of the court. 

Besides exerting these qualities, a leader 
may render his statements not only perspicu¬ 
ous but eleggnt; relieve the dulness of a cause 
by wit not too subtle; and sometimes enliven 
the court by a momentary play of fancy. To 
describe Mr. Erskine, when at the bar, is to 
ascertain the highest intellectual eminence to 
which a barrister, under the most favourable 
circumstances, may safely aspire. He had no 
imaginative power, no originality of thought, 
no great comprehension of intellect, to encum¬ 
ber his progress. Inimitable as pleadings, his 
corrected speeches supply nothing which, taken 
apart from its context and the occasion, is 
worthy of a pl-ace in the memory. Their most 
brilliant passages are but commonplaces ex¬ 
quisitely wrought, and curiously adapted to 
his design. Had his mind been pregnant with 
greater things, teeming with beautiful images, 
or endued with deep wisdom, he would have 
been less fitted to shed lustre on the ordinary 
feelings and transactions of life. If he had 
been able to answer Pitt without fainting, or 
to support Fox without sinking into insignifi¬ 
cance, he would not have been the delight of 
special juries, and the glory of the Court of 
King’s Bench. For that sphere, his powers, 
his acquisitions, and his temperament were 
exactly framed. He brought into it, indeed, 
accomplishments never displayed there before 
in equal perfection—glancing wit, rich humour, 
infinite grace of action, singular felicity of 
language, and a memory elegantly stored, yet 
not crowded with subjects of classical and fan¬ 
ciful illustration. Above his audience, he was 
not beyond their sight, and he possessed rare 






Ill 


ON THE PROFES 

facilities of raising them to his own level. In 
this purpose he was aided by his connection 
with a noble family, by a musical voice, and 
by an eloquent eye, which enticed men to for¬ 
give, and even to admire his natural polish 
and refined allusions. But his moral qualities 
tended even more to win them. Who could 
resist a disposition overflowing with kindness, 
animal spirits as elastic as those of a school¬ 
boy, and a love of gayety and pleasure which 
shone out amidst the most anxious labours I 
His very weaknesses became instruments of 
fascination. His egotism, his vanity, his per¬ 
sonal frailties, were all genial, and gave him 
an irresistible claim to sympathy. His warm¬ 
est colours were drawn, not from the fancy, 
but the affections. If he touched on the ro¬ 
mantic, it was on the little chapter of romance 
which belongs to the most hurried and feverish 
life. r J he unlettered clown, and the assiduous 
tradesman, understood him, when he revived 
some bright recollection of childhood, or 
brought back on the heart the enjoyments of 
old friendship, or touched the chord of domes¬ 
tic love and sorrow. He wielded with skill 
and power the weapons which precedent sup¬ 
plied, but he rarely sought for others. When 
he defended the rights of the subject, it was 
not by abstract disquisition, but by freshening 
up anew the venerable customs and immuni¬ 
ties which he found sanctioned by courts and 
parliaments, and infusing into them new en¬ 
ergy. He entrenched himself within the forms 
of pleading, even when he ventured to glance 
into literature and history. These forms he 
rendered dignified as a fence against oppres¬ 
sion, and cast on them sometimes the playful 
hues of his fancy. His powers were not only 
adapted to his sphere, but directed by admi¬ 
rable discretion and taste. In smalPcauses he 
was never betrayed into exaggeration, but con¬ 
trived to give an interest to their details, and 
to conduct them at once with dexterity and 
grace. His jests told for arguments; his di¬ 
gressions only threw the jury off their guard, 
that he might strike a decisive blow; his au¬ 
dacity was always wise. His firmness was no 
less under right direction than his weaknesses. 
He withstood the bench, and rendered the bar 
immortal service ; not so much by the courage 
of the resistance, as by the happy selection of 
its time, and the exact propriety of its manner. 
He was, in short, the most consummate advo¬ 
cate of whom we have any trace; he left his 
profession higher than he found it; and yet, 
beyond its pale, he was only an incomparable 
companion, a lively pamphleteer, and a weak 
and superficial debater! 

Mr. Scarlett, the present leader of the Court 
of King’s Bench, has less brilliancy than his 
predecessor, but is not perhaps essentially in¬ 
ferior to him in the management of causes. 
He studiously disclaims imagination; he rarely 
addresses the passions; but he now and then 
gives indications which prove that he has 
disciplined a mind of considerable elegance 
and strength to Nisi Prius uses. In the fine 
tact of which we have already spoken—the in¬ 
tuitive power of common sense sharpened 
within a peculiar circle—he has no superior, 
and perhaps no equal. He never betrays 


5ION OF THE BAR. 

anxiety in the crisis of a cause, but instantly 
decides among complicated difficulties, and is 
almost always right. He can bridge over a 
nonsuit with insignificant facts, and tread upon 
the gulf steadily but warily to its end. What 
Johnson said of Burke’s manner of treating a 
subject is true of his management of a cause, 
“ he winds himself into it like a great serpent.” 
He does not take a single view of it, nor de¬ 
sert it when it begins to fail, but throws him¬ 
self into all its windings, and struggles in it 
while it has life. There is a lucid arrange¬ 
ment, and sometimes a light vein of pleasantry 
and feeling in his opening speeches; but his 
greatest visible triumph is in his replies. These 
do not consist of a mere se/ies of ingenious 
remarks on conflicting evidence; still less of a 
tiresome examination of the testimony of each 
witness singly; but are as finely arranged on 
the instant, and thrown into as noble and de¬ 
cisive masses, as if they had been prepared in 
the study. By a vigorous grasp of thought, he 
forms a plan and an outline, which he first dis¬ 
tinctly marks, and then proceeds to fill up with 
masterly touches. When a case has been 
spread over half a day, and apparently shattered 
by the speech and witnesses of his adversary, 
he will gather it up, condense, concentrate, and 
render it conclusive. He imparts a weight 
and solidity to all that he touches. Vague 
suspicions become certainties, as he exhibits 
them ; and circumstances light, valueless, and 
unconnected till then, are united together, and 
come down in wedges which drive conviction 
into the mind. Of this extraordinary power, 
his reply on the first trial of'“The King v. 
Collins,” where he gained the verdict against 
evidence and justice, was a wonderful speci¬ 
men. If such a speech is not an effort of genius, 
it is so much more complete than many works 
which have a portion of that higher faculty, 
that we almost hesitate to place it below them. 
Mr. Scarlett, in the debate on the motion rela¬ 
tive to the Chancellor’s attack on Mr. Aber¬ 
crombie, showed that he has felt it neces¬ 
sary to bend his mind considerably to the rou¬ 
tine of his practice. He was then surprised 
into his own original nature; and forgetting, 
the measured compass of his long adopted 
voice and manner, spoke out in a broad north¬ 
ern dialect, and told daring truths which asto¬ 
nished the house. It is not thus, however, that 
he wins verdicts and compels the court to grant 
“ rules to show cause !” 

Mr. Brougham may, at first, appear to form 
an exception to the doctrines we have endea 
voured to establish; but, on attentive consi¬ 
deration, will be found their most striking ex 
ample. True it is, that this extraordinary man, 
who, without high birth, splendid fortune, or 
aristocratic connection, has, by mere intellec¬ 
tual power, become the parliamentary leader 
of the whigs of England, is at last beginning 
to succeed in the profession he has conde¬ 
scended to follow. But, stupendous as his 
abilities, and various as his acquisitions are, 
he does not possess that one presiding faculty 
—imagination, which, as it concentrates all 
others, chiefly renders them unavailing for in 
ferior uses. Mr. Brougham’s po wers are not thus 
united and rendered unwieldy and prodigious, 





112 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


but remain apart, and neither assist nor im¬ 
pede each other. The same speech, indeed, 
may give scope to several talents; to lucid 
narration, to brilliant wit, to irresistible rea¬ 
soning, and even to heart-touching pathos; 
but these will be found in parcels, not blended 
and interfused in one superhuman burst of 
passionate eloquence. The single power in 
which he excels all others is sarcasm, and his 
deepest inspiration—Scorn. Hence he can 
awaken terror and shame far better than he 
can melt, agitate, and raise. Animated by 
this blasting spirit, he can “bare the mean 
hearts” which “ lurk beneath” a hundred 
“stars,” and smite a majority of lordly 
persecutors into the dust! His power is all 
directed to the practical and earthy. It is 
rather that of a giant than a magician ; of 
Briareus than of Prospero. He can do a hun¬ 
dred things well, and almost at once; but he 
cannot do the one highest thing; he cannot by 
a single touch reveal the hidden treasures of 
the soul, and astonish the world with truth and 
beauty unknown till disclosed at his bidding. 
Over his vast domain he ranges with amazing 
activity, and is a different man in each pro¬ 
vince which he occupies. He is not one, but 
Legion. At three in the morning he will make 
a reply in parliament, which shall blanch the 
cheeks and appal the hearts of his enemies; 
and at half-past nine he will be found in his 
place in court, working out a case in which a 
bill of five pounds is disputed, with all the 
plodding care of the most laborious junior. 
This multiplicity of avocation, and division of 
talent, suit the temper of his constitution and 
mind. Not only does he accomplish a greater 
variety of purposes than any other man—not 
only does he give anxious attention to every 
petty cause, while he is fighting a great politi¬ 
cal battle, and weighing the relative interests 
of nations—not only does he write an article 
for the Edinburgh Review while contesting a 
county, and prepare complicated arguments on 
Scotch appeals by way of rest from his gene¬ 
rous endeavours to educate a people—but he 
does all this as if it were perfectly natural to 
*him, in a manner so unpretending and quiet, 
that a stranger would think him a merry gen¬ 
tleman, who had nothing to do but enjoy him¬ 
self and fascinate others. The fire which burns 
in the tough fibres of his intellect does not 
quicken his pulse, or kindle his blood to more 
than a genial warmth. He, therefore, is one 
man in the senate, another in the study, an¬ 
other in a committee room, and another in a 
petty cause; and consequently is never above 
die work which he has to perform. His pow¬ 


ers are all as distinct and as ready for use as 
those of the most accomplished of Old Bailey 
practitioners. His most remarkable faculty, 
taken singly, the power of sarcasm, can be 
understood, even by a Lancaster jury. And 
yet, though worthy to rank with statesmen be¬ 
fore whom Erskine sunk into insignificance, 
and though following his profession with zeal 
and perseverence almost unequalled, he has 
hardly been able to conquer the impediment 
of that splendid reputation, which to any other 
man must have been fatal! 

These great examples are sufficient for our 
purpose, and it would be invidious to add 
more. Without particularizing any, we may 
safely affirm that if the majority of successful 
advocates are not men of genius, they are men 
of very active and penetrating intellect, dis¬ 
ciplined by the peculiar necessity of their pro¬ 
fession to the strictest honour, and taught by 
their intimate and near acquaintance with all 
the casualties of human life, and the varieties 
of human nature, indulgence to frailty and 
generosity to misfortune. It is impossible to 
estimate too highly the value of such a body 
of men, aspiring, charitable, and acute; who, 
sprung from the people, naturally sympathize 
with their interests ; who, being permitted to 
grasp at the honours of the state, are supplied 
with high motives to preserve its constitution; 
and who, if not very eager for improving the 
laws, at least keep unceasing watch over 
every attempt to infringe on the rights they 
sustain, or to pervert them to purposes of op¬ 
pression. If they are too prone to change their 
party as they rise, they seldom do so from base 
or sordid motives, and often infuse a better 
spirit into those whose favours they consent 
to receive. 

Let no one of those who, with a conscious¬ 
ness of fine talents, has failed in his profes¬ 
sion, abate his self-esteem, or repine at his 
fortune. A life of success, though a life of 
excitement, is also a life of constant toil, in 
which the pleasures of contemplation and of 
society are sparingly felt, and which some¬ 
times tends to a melancholy close. Besides, 
the best part of our days is past before the 
struggle begins. Success itself has nothing 
half so sweet as the anticipations of boyish 
ambition and the partial love by which they 
were fostered. A barrister can scarcely hope 
to begin a career of anxious prosperity till 
after thirty; and surely he who has attained 
that age, after a youth of robust study and 
manly pleasure, with firm friends, and an un¬ 
spotted character, has no right to complain r.f 
the world! 



THE WINE CELLAR. 


113 


THE WINE CELLAR. 

[New Monthly Magazine.] 


Facilis descensus A verm, 

Sed rcvocare gradum, superasque evadere ad auras, 

Hie labor, hoc opus est. Virg. 

In the deep discovery of the subterranean world, a shallow part would satisfy some inquirers, who, if two or 
three yards were opened beneath the surface would not care to rake the bowels of Potosi and regions towards 
the centre. Sir Thomas Browne. 


Men have always attached a peculiar inte¬ 
rest to that region of the earth which extends 
for a few yards beneath its surface. Below 
this depth the imagination, delighting to busy 
itself among the secrets of Time and Mortality, 
hath rarely cared to penetrate. A few feet of 
ground may suffice for the repose of the first 
dwellers of the earth until its frame shall grow 
old and perish. The little coin, silent picture 
of forgotten battles, lies among the roots of 
shrubs and vegetables for centuries, till it is 
turned into light by some careful husbandman, 
who ploughs an inch deeper than his fathers. 
The dead bones which, loosened from their 
urns, gave occasion to Sir Thomas Browne’s 
noblest essay, “had outlasted the living ones 
of Methusalem, and in a yard under ground, 
and thin walls of clay, outworn all the strong 
and spacious buildings above them, and quietly 
rested under the drums and tramplings of three 
conquests.” Superstition chooses the subter¬ 
ranean space which borders on the abodes of 
the living, and ranges her vaults and mysteri¬ 
ous caverns near to the scenes of revelry, 
passion, and joy ; and within this narrow rind 
rest the mighty products of glorious vintages, 
the stores of that divine juice which, partaking 
of the rarest qualities of physical and intellec¬ 
tual nature, blends them in happier union 
within us. Here, in this hallowed ground, the 
germs of inspiration and the memorials of de¬ 
cay lie side by side, and Bacchus holds divided 
empire with the King of Terrors. 

As I sat indulging this serious vein of re¬ 
flection, some years ago, when my relish of 
philosophy and port was young, a friend called 
to remind me that we had agreed to dine to¬ 
gether with rather more luxury than usual. 
I had made the appointment with boyish eager¬ 
ness, and now started gladly from my solitary 
reveries to keep it. The friend with whom I 
had planned our holiday, was one of those few 
persons whom you may challenge to a convi¬ 
vial evening with a mathematical certainty of 
enjoying it;—which is the rarest quality of 
friendship. Many who are equal to great exi¬ 
gencies, and would go through fire and water 
to serve you, want the delicate art to allay the 
petty irritations, and heighten the ordinary en¬ 
joyments of life, and are quite unable to make 
themselves agreeable at a iete-a-tcle dinner. 
Not so my companion ; who, zealous, prompt, 
and consoling in all seasons of trial, had good 
sense for every little difficulty, and a happy 
humour for every social moment; at all times 
15 


a better and wiser self. Blest with good but 
never boisterous spirits; endowed with the 
rare faculty not only of divining one’s wishes, 
but instantly making them his own; skilful 
in sweetening good counsel with honest flat¬ 
tery; able to bear with enthusiasm in which 
he might not participate, and to avoid smiling 
at the follies he could not help discerning; 
ever ready to indulge the secret wish of his 
guest “for another bottle,” with heart enough 
to drink it with him, and head enough to take 
care of him when it was gone, he was (and yet 
is) the pleasantest of advisers, the most genial 
of listeners, and the quietest of lively compa¬ 
nions. On this memorable day he had, with 
his accustomed forethought, given particular 
orders for our entertainment, and I hastened 
to enjoy it with him, little thinking how deep 
and solemn was the pleasure which awaited 
us. 

We arrived at the-Coffee House about 

six on a bright afternoon in the middle of Sep¬ 
tember, and found every thing ready and ex¬ 
cellent; and the turtle magnificent and finely 
relieved by lime punch effectually iced; grilled 
salmon crisply prepared for its appropriate 
lemon and mustard; a leg of Welch mutton 
just tasted as a “sweet remembrancer” of its 
heathy and hungry hills; woodcocks with 
thighs of exquisite delicacy and essence 
“deeply interfused” in thick soft toast; and 
mushrooms, which Nero justly called “the 
flesh of the gods,” simply broiled and faintly 
sprinkled with Cayenne.* Our conversation 
was, of course, confined to mutual invitations 
and expressive criticisms on the dishes; the 
only table-talk which men of sense can tole¬ 
rate. But the most substantial gratifications, 
in this world at least, must have an end ; and 
the last mushroom was at length eaten. Un- 


* This trait sufficiently accounts for the flowers which 
were seen scattered on the sepulchre of Nero, when the 
popular indignation raged highest against his memory— 
the grateful Roman had eaten his mushroom under im¬ 
perial auspices. Had Lord Byron been acquainted with 
the flavour of choice mushrooms, he would have turned 
to give it honour due after the following stanza, one of 
the noblest in- that work, which, with all its faults of 
waywardness and haste, is a miracle of language, pa¬ 
thos, playfulness, sublimity, and sense. 

When Nero perish’d by the justest doom 
Which ever the destroyer yel destroy’d, 

Amidst the roar of liberated Rome, 

The nations free, and the world overjoy’d, 

Some hand unseen strew’d flowers upon his tomb— 
Perhaps the weakness of a heart not void 
Of feeling for some kindness done when power 
Had left the wretch one uncorrupted hour! 

K 2 








Ill 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


fortunately for the repose of the evening, we 
were haunted by the recollection of some 
highly flavoured port, and, in spite of strong 
evidence of identity from conspiring waiters, 
sought for the like in vain. Bottle after bottle 
was produced and dismissed as “not the thing,” 
till our generous host, somewhat between libe¬ 
ral hospitality and just impatience, smilingly 
begged us to accompany him into the cellar, 
inspect the whole of “ his little stock,” and 
choose for ourselves ! We took him at his 
word ; another friend of riper years and graver 
authority joined us; and we prepared to fol¬ 
low our guide, who stood ready to conduct us 
to the banks of Lethe. All the preparations, 
like those which preceded similar descents 
of the heroes of old, bespoke the awfulness 
and peril of the journey. Our host preceded 
us with his massive keys to perform an office 
collateral to that of St. Peter; behind, a dingy 
imp of the nether regions stood with glasses 
in his hands and a prophetic grin on his face; 
and each of us was armed with a flaming torch 
to penetrate the gloom which now stretched 
through the narrow entrance before us. 

We descended the broken and winding stair¬ 
case with cautious steps, and, to confers the 
truth, not without some apprehension for out- 
upward journey, yet hoping to be numbered 
among that select class of Pluto’s visiters, 
“ quos ardens evexit ad cethera virlus.” On a 
sudden, turning a segment of a mighty cask, 
we stood in the centre of the vast receptacle 
of spirituous riches. The roof of solid and 
stoutly compacted brickwork, low, but boldly 
arched, looked substantial enough to defy all 
attacks of the natural enemy, water, and resist 
a' second deluge. From each side ran long 
galleries, partially shown by the red glare of 
the torches, extending one way far beneath the 
busy trampling of the greatest shopkeepers 
and stock-jobbers in the world; and, on the 
other, below the clamour of the Old Bailey 
Court and the cells of its victims. What a 
range ! Here rest, cooling in the deep-delved 
cells, the concentrated essences of sunny 
years ! In this archway huge casks of mighty 
wine are scattered in bounteous confusion, 
like the heaped jewels and gold on the “rich 
strond” of Spenser, the least of which would 
lay Sir Walter’s Fleming low! Throughout 
that long succession of vaults, thousands of 
bottles, “in avenues disposed,” lie silently 
waiting their time to kindle the imagination, 
to sharpen the wit, to open the soul, and to 
unchain the trembling tongue. There may 
you feel the true grandeur of quiescent power, 
and walk amidst the palpable elements of mad¬ 
ness or of wisdom. What stores of sentiment 
in that butt of raciest Sherry! What a fund 
of pensive thought! What suggestions for 
delicious remembrance ! What “ aids to re¬ 
flection !” (genuine as those of Coleridge) in 
that Hock of a century old. What sparkling 
fancies, whirling and foaming, from a stout 
body of thought in that full and ripe Cham¬ 
pagne ! What mild and serene philosophy in 
that Burgundy, ready to shed “ its sunset glow” 
on society and nature! This pale Brandy, 
softened by age, is the true “spirit” which 
“disturbs us with the joy of elevated thoughts.” 


That Hermitage, stealing gently into the cham¬ 
bers of the brain, shall make us “babble of green 
fields;” and that delicate Claret, innocently 
bubblingand dancing in the slender glass, shall 
bring its own vine-coloured hills more vividly 
before us even than Mr. Stanfield’s pencil! 
There from a time-changed bottle, tenderly 
drawn from a crypt, protected by huge prime¬ 
val cobwebs, you may taste antiquity, and 
feel the olden time on your palate! As we 
sip this marvellous Port,* to the very colour 
of which age has been gentle, methinks we 
have broken into one of those rich vaults in 
which Sir Thomas Browne, the chief butler 
of the tomb, finds treasures rarer than jewels. 
“ Some,” saith he, “ discover sepulchral vessels 
containing liquors which time hath incrassated 
into jellies. For besides lacrymatories, notable 
lamps, with oils and aromatic liquors, attended 
noble ossuaries; and some yet retaining a 
vinosity and spirit in them, which, if any have 
tasted, they have far exceeded the palates of 
antiquity;—liquors, not to be computed by 
years of annual magistrates, but by great con¬ 
junctions and the fatal periods of kingdoms. 
The draughts of consulary date were but crude 
unto these, and opimian wine but in the must 
unto them.” 

We passed on from flavour to flavour with 
our proud and liberal guide, whose comments 
added zest even to the text which he had to 
dilate on. A scent, a note of music, a voice 
long unheard, the stirring of the summer 
breeze, may startle us with the sudden revival 
of long-forgotten feelings and thoughts, but 
none of these little whisperers to the heart is 
so potently endowed with this simple spell as 
the various flavours of Port to one who has 
tried, and, in various moods of his own mind, 
relished them all. This full, rough, yet fruity 
wine, brings back that first season of London 
life, when topics seemed exhaustless as words 
and coloured with rainbow hues; when Irish 
students, fresh from Trinity College, Dublin, 
were not too loud or familiar to be borne; 
when the florid fluency of others was only tire¬ 
some as it interrupted one’s own ; when the 
vast Temple Hall was not too large or too cold 
for sociality; and ambition, dilating in the 
venerable space, shaped dreams of enterprise, 
labour, and glory, till it required more wine to 
assuage its fervours. This taste of a liquor, 
firm yet in body, though tawny with years, 
bears with it to the heart that hour when, hav¬ 
ing returned to my birth-place, after a long and 
eventful absence, and having been cordially 
welcomed by my hearty friends, I slipped 
away from the table, and hurried, in the light 
of a brilliant sunset, to the gently declining 
fields and richly wooded hedgerows which were 
the favourite haunt of my serious boyhood. 
The swelling hills seemed touched with ethe¬ 
real softness; the level plain was invested 
“ with purpureal gleams;” every wild rose and 
stirring branch was eloquent with vivid recol¬ 
lections: a thousand hours of happy thought- 

* Old Tort wine is more ancient to the imagination 
than any other, though in fact it may have been known 
fewer years; as a broken Gothic arch has more of the 
spirit of antiquity about it than a Grecian temple. Port 
reminds us of the obscure middle ages; but Hock, like 
the classical mythology, is always young. 






THE WINE CELLAR. 


115 


fulness came back upon the heart; and the 
glorious clouds which fringed the western ho¬ 
rizon looked prophetic of golden years “ pre¬ 
destined to descend and bless mankind.” This 
soft, highly-flavoured Port, in every drop of 
which you seem to taste an aromatic flower, 
revives that delicious evening, when, after 
days of search for the tale of Rosamond Grey, 
of which I had indistinctly heard, I returned 
from an obscure circulating library with my 
prize, and brought out a long-cherished bottle, 
given me two years before as a curiosity, by 
way of accompaniment to that quintessence of 
imaginative romance. How did I enjoy, with 
a strange delight, its scriptural pathos, like a 
newly discovered chapter of the Book of Ruth ; 
hang enamoured over its young beauty, love¬ 
lier for the antique frame of language in which 
it was set; and long to be acquainted with the 
author, though I scarcely dared aspire so high, 
and little anticipated those hundreds of happy 
evenings since passed in his society, which 
now crowd on me in rich confusion!—Thus 
is it that these subtlest of remembrancers not 
only revive some joyful season, but this also 
“contains a glass which shows us many 
more,” unlocking the choicest stores of memo¬ 
ry, that cellar of the brain, in which lie the 
treasures which make life precious. 

But see! our party have seated themselves 
beneath that central arch to enjoy a calmer 
pleasure after the fatigues of their travel. They 
look romantic as banditti in a cave, and good- 
humoured as a committee of aldermen. A 
cask which has done good service in its day— 
the shell of the evaporated spirit—serves for a 
table, round which they sit on rude but ample 
benches. The torches planted in the ground 
cast a broad light over the scene, making the 
ruddy wine glisten, and seeming, by their irre¬ 
gular flickering, as if they too felt the influence 
of the spot. My friend, usually so gentle in 
his convivialities, has actually broken forth 
into a song, such as these vaults never heard ; 
our respected senior sits trying to preserve 
his solemn look, but unconsciously smiling; 

and Mr. B-1, the founder of the banquet, is 

sedulously doing the honours with only in- 
lenser civility, and calling out for fresh store 


of ham, sandwiches, and broiled mushrooms, 
to enable us to do justice to the liquid delica¬ 
cies before us. The usual order of wines is 
disregarded; no affected climax, no squeamish 
assortments of tastes for us here; we despise 
all rules, and yield a sentimental indulgence to 
the aberrations of the bottle. “Riches fine- 
less” are piled around us; we are below the 
laws and their ministers; and just, lo! in the 
farthestglimmer of the torches lies outstretched 
our black Mercury, made happy by our leav¬ 
ings, and seeming to rejoice that in the cellar, 
as in the grave, all men are equal. 

How the soul expands from this narrow cell 
and bids defiance to the massive walls l What 
Elysian scenes begin to dawn amidst the dark¬ 
ness ! Now do I understand the glorious tale 
of Aladdin and the subterranean gardens. It 
is plain that the visionary boy had discovered 
just such a cellar as this, and there eagerly 
learned to gather amaranthine fruits, and 
range in celestial groves till the Genius of the 
Ring, who has sobered many a youth, took 
him in charge, and restored him to common 
air. Here is the true temple, the inner shrine 
of Bacchus. Feebly have they understood the 
attributes of the benignant god, who have re¬ 
presented him as delighting in a garish bower 
with clustering grapes; here he rejoices to sit, 
in his true citadel, amidst his mightier trea¬ 
sures. Methinks we could now, in prophetic 
mood, trace the gay histories of these imbodied 
inspirations among those who shall feel them 
hereafter; live at once along a thousand lines 
of sympathy and thought which they shall 
kindle; reverse the melancholy musing of 
Hamlet, and trace that which the bunghole- 
stopper confines to “ the noble dust of an Alex¬ 
ander,” which it shall quicken ; and peeping 
into the studies of our brother contributors, 
see how that vintage which flushed the hills 
of France with purple, shall mantle afresh in 
the choice articles of this Magazine. 

But it is time to stop, or my readers will 
suspect me of a more recent visit to the cellar. 
They will be mistaken. One such descent is 
enough for a life; and I stand too much in 
awe of the Powers of the Grave to venture 
again so near to their precincts# 






116 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


ON THE DESTRUCTION OF THE BRUNSWICK 

THEATRE BY FIRE. 


[New Monthly Magazine.] 


We notice this lamentable accident in our 
dramatic record, not for the sake of inquiry 
into its causes, or of multiplying the dismal 
associations which it awakens, but for the 
striking manner in which it has brought out 
the proper virtues of players. Actors of all 
ranks; managers of all interests; the retired 
and the active ; the successful and the obscure; 
the refined and the vulgar; from Mrs. Siddons 
down to the scene-shifters of Sadler’s Wells, 
have pressed forward to afford their sympathy 
and relief to the living sufferers. The pro¬ 
prietors of the patent theatres, who were just 
complaining of the infringements on their pur¬ 
chased rights, which have rendered them 
almost valueless, at once forgot the meditated 
injury to themselves, and saw nothing but the 
misery of their comrades. It is only on occa¬ 
sions such as these that the charities which 
are nurtured amidst the excitements and vi¬ 
cissitudes of a theatrical life are exhibited, so 
as to put the indiscriminate condemnations of 
the crabbed moralist and the fanatic to shame. 
There is more equality in the distribution of 
goodness and evil than either of these classes 
imagine; for the “respectable” part of the 
community are powerful and permanent; and 
obtain, perhaps, something more than justice 
for the negative virtues. Far be it from us to 
undervalue these, or to sympathize with any 
who would represent the ordinary guards and 
fences of morality as things of little value; 
but justice is due to all; and justice, we cannot 
help thinking, is scarcely done to those whose 
irregularities and whose virtues grow together 
on that verge of ruin and despair on which 
they stand in the times of their giddiest eleva¬ 
tion. A cold observance of the decencies of 
life excites no man’s envy and wounds no 
man’s self-love ; and, therefore, it is allowed 
without grudging; while the dazzling errors 
and redeeming nobleness of the light-hearted 
and the generous are more easily abused than 
copied. To detect “ the soul of goodness in 
things evil,” is not to confound evil with good, 
or to weaken the laws of honour and con¬ 
science, but to give to them a finer precision 
and a more penetrating vigour. It is not by 
distinguishing, but by confounding, that perni¬ 
cious sentimentalists pervert the understanding 
and corrupt the affections. They lend to vice 
the names and attributes of virtue ; tack toge¬ 
ther qualities which could never be united in 
nature; and thus, in order to produce a new 
and startling effect, deprave the moral sensibi¬ 
lity, and relax the tone of manly feeling. But 
it is another thing to hold the balance fairly 
between the excellencies and the frailties of 
imperfect men ; to trace the hints and indica¬ 
tions of high emotion amidst the weaknesses 
of our nature; to consider temptations as well 


as transgressions, and to estimate not only 
what is done but what is resisted. We can, 
indeed, do this but partially, yet we should, as 
far as possible, dispose ourselves to be just in 
our moral censures ; and we shall find in those 
whom we call “ good for nothing people,” more 
good than we think for. Actors are, no doubt, 
more liable to deviate from the ordinary pro¬ 
prieties of conduct, than merchants or agricul¬ 
turists ; it is their business to give pleasure to 
others, and, therefore, they must incline to the 
pleasurable ; they live in the present, and it is 
no wonder that, as their tenure is more preca¬ 
rious than that of others, they take less thought 
for the future. But if they have less of 
the virtue of discretion, they have also less of 
that alloy of gross selfishness to which it is 
allied; they have much of the compassion 
which they help to diffuse; and ludicrous as 
their vanities sometimes are, they give way at 
once on the touch of sympathy for unmerited 
or merited sorrow. Mr. Kean is an extreme 
instance, perhaps, both of imprudence and ge¬ 
nerosity ; and accordingly no man living has 
been treated with greater injustice by a moral 
and discerning public. Raised in a moment 
from obscurity and want to be the idol of the 
town ; courted, caressed, and applauded by the 
multitude, praised by men of genius, with rank, 
beauty, and wit, proud to be enlisted in his 
train, he grew giddy and fell, and was hooted 
from the stage with brutal indignities. All 
knew his faults ; but how few were capable of 
understanding his virtues—his princely spirit, 
his warm and cordial friendship, his proneness 
to forget his own interests in those of others, 
his magnanimity and his kindness ! The 
“ respectable” part of the community do not 
engross all its goodness, although they turn it 
to the best account for their own benefit. Un¬ 
der the shield of this character, they sometimes 
do things which the vagabonds they sneer at 
would not, and could not achieve ; and such is 
the submission of mankind to custom, that they 
retain their name even when they are delected. 
An attorney, in large practice, convicted of a 
fraud, retains the addition “ respectable” till he 
receives judgment; the announcement of the 
failure of a country bank, by which hundreds 
are ruined, styles the swindlers “ the respecta¬ 
ble firm ;” and a most respectable member of 
the religious world speculates in hops, or in 
stock, without reproach, and, when he has failed 
for thousands, fraudulently gambled away, 
continues to hold shilling whist in pious abo¬ 
mination. We have been led to this train of 
reflection by seeing in a newspaper the speech 
of a most respectable Home Missionary, named 
Smith, at the Mansion-house, in which he 
exults in the horrible catastrophe as “ the 
triumph of piety in London !” and this person, 



FIRST APPEARANCE OF MISS FANNY KEMBLE. 


117 


no doubt, regards the accidental mention of the 
name of the Supreme Being on the stage as 
blasphemy. It is difficult to express one’s in¬ 
dignation at such a spirit and such language 
without wounding the feelings of those whose 
opinions of the guilt of theatrical enjoyments 
have not rendered them insensible to the feelings 
of others. 

It must be admitted that there is something 
in the sudden death of actors which shocks us 
peculiarly at the moment, because the contrast 
between life and death seems more violent in 
their case than in that of others. We connect 
them, by the la\fr of association, with our own 
gayest moments, and fancy that they who live 
to please must lead a life of pleasure. Alas ! 
the truth is often far otherwise. The comedian 
droops behind the scenes, quite chapfallen ; 
the tragic hero retires from his stately griefs to 
brood over homely and familiar sorrows, 
which no poetry softens ; the triumphant ac¬ 
tress, arrayed in purple and in pall, may know 
the pangs of despised love, or anticipate the 
coming on of the time when she shall be pre¬ 
maturely old, and as certainly neglected. The 
stage is a grave business to those who study it 
even successfully, though its rewards are in¬ 
toxicating enough to turn the most sober brain. 
The professors in misfortune—especially such 
a misfortune as this—have the most urgent 
claims on our sympathy. Should we allow 
those to be miserable who have so often made 
us and thousands happy 1 Should we shut our 


| hearts against those who have touched them so 
truly; who have helped to lighten the weight 
of existence; and have made us feel our kin¬ 
dred with a world of sorrow and of tears 1 Their 
art has the most sacred right to the protection 
of humanity, for it touches it most nearly. It 
makes no appeal to posterity; it does not aim 
at the immortal, in contempt of our perishable 
aims and regards ; but it is contented to live in 
our enjoyments, and to die ‘with them. Its 
triumphs are not diffused by the press, nor re¬ 
corded in marble, but registered on the red¬ 
leaved tablets of the heart, satisfied to date its 
fame with the personal existence of its wit¬ 
nesses. It forms a part of ourselves; beats in 
the quickest pulses of our youth, and supplies 
the choicest topics of our garrulous age. It 
partakes of our fragility, nay even dies before 
us, and leaves its monument in our memories. 
Surely, then, it becomes us “ to see the players 
well bestowed,” when their gayeties are sud¬ 
denly and prematurely eclipsed, and their short 
flutterings of vanity stayed before their time ; 
or to provide for those who depended on their 
exertions. Of all people, they do most for re¬ 
lations ; they hence most depend on them ; 
and, therefore, their case both deserves and 
requires our most active sympathy. The call 
has been, in this instance, powerfully made, 
and will, we hope, be answered practically 
by all who revere the genius, and love the pro¬ 
fession, and partake the humanity of Shak- 
speare. 


FIRST APPEARANCE OF MISS FANNY KEMBLE. 

[New Monthly Magazine.] 


When we predicted, last month, that if Co¬ 
vent Garden theatre should be opened at all, it 
would derive attraction even from the extreme 
depression into which it had sunk, we had no 
idea of the manner in which this hope would 
be realized. We little dreamed that the cir¬ 
cumstances which had threatened to render 
this house desolate, would inspire female 
genius to spring from the family whose ho¬ 
nours were interwoven with its destiny, like 
an infant Minerva, almost perfect at birth, to 
revive its fortunes and renew its glories. In 
the announcement that, on the opening night, 
Miss Fanny Kemble, known to be a young lady 
of high literary endowments, though educated 
without the slightest view to the stage as a 
profession, would present herself as Juliet— 
that her mother, who, in her retirement, had 
been followed by the grateful recollections of 
all lovers of the drama, would reappear, in the 
part of Lady Capulet, to introduce and support 
her; and that her father would imbody, for 
the first time, that delightful creation of Shak- 
speare’s happiest mood, Mercutio—there was 
abundant interest to ensure a full, respectable, 
and excited audience; but no general expecta¬ 


tion had gone forth of the splendid event which 
was to follow. Even in our youngest days, 
we never shared in so anxious a throb of ex¬ 
pectation as that which awaited the several 
appearances of these personages on the stage. 
The interest was almost too complicated and 
intense to be borne with pleasure; and when 
Kemble bounded on the scene, gayly pointed at 
Romeo, as if he had cast all his cares and 
twenty of his years behind him, there was 
a grateful relief from the first suspense, that 
expressed itself in the heartiest enthusiasm we 
ever witnessed. Similar testimonies of feel¬ 
ing greeted the entrance of Mrs. Kemble; but 
our hearts did not breathe freely till the fair 
debutant herself had entered, pale, trembling 
but resolved, and had found encouragement 
and shelter in her mother’s arms. But another 
and a happier source of interest was soon 
opened; for the first act did not close till all 
fears for Miss Kemble’s success had been dis¬ 
pelled ; the looks of every spectator conveyed 
that he was electrified by the influence of new- 
tried genius, and was collecting emotions, in 
silence, as he watched its development, to 
swell its triumph with fresh acclamations. Fqt 





118 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


our own part, the illusion that she was Shak- 
speare’s own Juliet came so speedily upon us, 
as to suspend the power of specific criticism— 
so delicious was the fascination, that we dis¬ 
liked even the remarks of by-standers that dis¬ 
turbed that illusive spell; and though, half an 
hour before, we had blessed the applauding 
bursts of the audience, like omens of propi¬ 
tious thunder, we were now half-impatient of 
their frequency and duration, because they in¬ 
truded on a still higher pleasure, and because 
we needed no assurance that Miss Kemble’s 
success was sealed. 

Feeling that the occasion formed an era in 
our recollections of the theatre, we compared 
her, in our imagination, with all the great ac¬ 
tresses we had; and it is singular, though we 
can allege nothing like personal likeness, that 
Mrs. Jordan was the one whom she brought 
back, in the first instance, to our memory. We 
might have set down this idea as purely fanci¬ 
ful, if we had not learned that it has crossed 
the minds of other observers. As form and 
features seem to have nothing to do with this 
reminiscence, we attribute it to the exquisite 
naturalness of Miss Kemble’s manner, and we 
cannot help connecting it with an anticipation 
that she will one day be as pre-eminently 
the comic as the tragic muse of our stage. 

Her traits of family resemblance struck us 
most powerfully in the deeper and more earn¬ 
est parts of her tragic performance. On one 
occasion, when her face only was revealed by 
her drapery, its intense expression brought 
Mrs. Siddons most vividly back to us. Miss 
Kemble’s personal qualifications for her pro¬ 
fession are, indeed, such as we might expect 
from one so parented and related. Her head 
is nobly formed and admirably placed on her 
shoulders—her brow is expansive and shaded 
by very dark hair—her eyes are full of a gifted 
soul, and her features are significant of intel¬ 
lect to a very extraordinary degree. Though 
scarcely reaching the middle height, she is 
finely proportioned, and she moves with such 
dignity and decision that it is only on recollec¬ 
tion we discover she is not tall. In boldness 
and dignity of action she unquestionably ap¬ 
proaches more nearly to Mrs. Siddons than any 
actress of our time excepting Pasta. Her voice, 
whilst it is perfectly feminine in its tones, is 
of great compass, and though, perhaps, not yet 
entirely within her command, gives proof of 
being able to express the sweetest emotions 
without monotony, and the sternest passions 
without harshness. She seems to know the 
stage by intuition, “as native there and to the 
manner born,” and she understands even now, 
by what magic we cannot divine, the precise 
effect she will produce on the most distant spec¬ 
tators. She treads the stage as if she had been 
matured by the study and practice of years. 
We dreamed for a while of being able to ana¬ 
lyze her acting, and to fix in our memory the 
finest moments of its power and grace; but her 
attitudes glide into each other so harmoniously 
that we at last gave up enumerating how often 
she seemed a study to the painter’s eye and a 
vision to the poet’s heart. 

At the first sight, Miss Kemble’s counte¬ 
nance conveys an impression of extraordinary 


intellect, and the manifestation of that faculty 
is a pervading charm of her acting. It gives 
her courage, it gives her promptitude—the 
power of seeing what is to be done, and of 
doing it without faltering or hesitation. She 
always aims at the highest effect, and almost 
always succeeds in realizing her finest concep¬ 
tions. 

The Juliet of Shakspeare is young and beau¬ 
tiful; but no mistake can be greater than the 
idea that her character can be impersonated 
with probability by a merely beautiful young 
woman. Juliet is a being of rich imagination; 
her eloquence breathes an ethereal spirit; and 
her heroic devotedness is as different from 
common-place romance, as superficial gilding 
is unlike the solid ore. By many an observer, 
the beautiful surface of her character is alone 
appreciated, and not that force and grandeur 
in it which is capable of sustaining itself in 
harmony, not only with the luxuriant com¬ 
mencement of the piece, but with the funeral 
terrors of its tragic close. Hence the expec¬ 
tation has been so often excited, that a lovely 
girl, who can look the character very inno¬ 
cently, and speak the garden-scene very pret¬ 
tily, is quite sufficient to be a representative 
of the heroine throughout; and hence the same 
expectation has been so often disappointed. 
The debutante may be often carried, without 
apparent failure, through a scene or two, by 
her beauty and pretty manner of love-making; 
but when the tragedy commences in earnest, 
her intellectual expression sinks under its 
terrors, and she appears no more than a poor 
young lady, driven mad with the vexation of 
love. 

Far remote from this description is the 
Juliet of Miss Kemble. It never was our for¬ 
tune to see Mrs. Siddons in the part, but Miss 
Kemble gives it a depth of tragic tone which 
none of her predecessors whom we have seen 
ever gave to it. Miss O’Neil, loth as we are 
to forget her fascinations, used to lighten the 
earlier scenes of the piece with some girlish 
graces that were accused of being infantine. 
Be that as it may, there were certainly a hun¬ 
dred little prettinesses enacted by hundreds of 
novices in the character, which attracted 
habitual applauses, but which Miss Kemble at 
once repudiated with the wise audacity of ge¬ 
nius ; at the same time, though she blends not 
a particle of affected girlishness with the part 
of Juliet, her youth and her truth still leave in 
it a Shakspearian naivete. As the tragedy deep¬ 
ens, her powers are developed in unison with 
the strengthened decision of purpose which 
the poet gives to the character. What a noble 
effect she produced in that scene where the 
Nurse, who had hitherto been the partner of * 
all her counsels, recommends her to marry 
Paris, and to her astonished exclamation, 
“ Speak’st thou from thy heart 1” answers, 
“ And from my soul too, or else beshrew them 
both.” At that momentous passage Miss Kem¬ 
ble erected her head, and extended her arm, 
with an expressive air which we never saw- 
surpassed in acting, and with a power like 
magic pronounced “ Amen!” In that attitude, 
and look, and word, she made us feel that Juliet, 
so late a nurseling, v-as now left alone in the 



THE MELO-DRAMAS AGAINST GAMBLING. 


119 


world—that the child was gone, and that the 
heroic woman had begun her part. By her 
change of tone and manner she showed that 
her heart was wound up to fulfil its destiny, 
and she bids the Nurse “ Go in,” in a tone of 
dignified command. That there- was such a 
change in Juliet we have always felt, but to 
mark its precise moment was reserved for this 
accomplished actress in a single tone. 

It is hardly needless to say, that Mr. Kemble’s 
Mercutio was delightful, independent even of 
the gallant spirit with which he carried off the 
weight of his anxieties on the first evening. It 
was charmingly looked, acted, and spoken— 


with only one little touch of baser matter in 
the mimickry of the Nurse—and closed by a 
death true to nature, and exhibiting, in milder 
light, all the brilliant traits of the character. 
W arde showed his good feeling in accepting 
the part of Friar Laurence, and his good taste 
in speaking the poetry of which it is made up: 
Mrs. Davenport played the Nurse as excellent¬ 
ly as she has played it for the last twenty years, 
and not better than she will play it for twenty 
years to come; and Mrs. Kemble went through 
the l.ttle she had to do in Lady Capulet with 
true motherly grace. 


THE MELO-DRAMAS AGAINST GAMBLING. 

[New Monthly Magazine.] 


There is at Paris, where all extremes meet, 
a kind of sub-theatrical public, which makes 
amends for the severity of the orthodox dra¬ 
matic code, by running wild after the most 
extravagant violations of all rules, and the 
strangest outrages on feeling and taste. Thus 
the members of this living paradox keep the 
balance even, and avenge the beautiful and the 
romantic. If they turn away with disgust from 
the Weird Sisters, and defy the magic in the 
web of Othello’s handkerchief, they dote on 
Mr. Cooke in the Monster, and consecrate 
ribands to his fame. If they refuse to pardon 
the grave-diggers in Hamlet, they seek for 
materials of absorbing interest in the charnal- 
house which no divine philosophy illumines. 
If they refuse to tragedy any larger bounds of 
time than their own classical poets could oc¬ 
cupy with frigid declamations, they will select 
three days from distant parts of a wretched 
and criminal life, in order to exhibit in full and 
odious perfection, the horrors which two fifteen 
years of atrocity can accumulate and mature. 
Of all the examples of the daring side of their 
eternal antithesis, the melo-drama against 
gambling, produced within the last few months, 
is the most extraordinary and the most suc¬ 
cessful. Each act is crowded with incidents, 
in which the only relief from the basest fraud 
and the most sickening selfishness is to be 
found in deeds which would chill the blood if 
it had leisure to freeze. We do not only “ sup 
full of horrors,” but breakfast and dine on them 
also. A youth, who on the eve of his wed¬ 
ding-day sells the jewels of his bride to gam¬ 
ble with the price, and who deceives her by the 
most paltry equivocations; a friend, who sup¬ 
plies this youth with substituted diamonds 
which he has himself stolen ; a broken-hearted 
father who dies cursing his son ; and a seduc¬ 
tion of the wife, filthily attempted while the 
husband is evading the officers of justice, are 
among the attractions which should enchain 
the attention, and gently arouse curiosity in 
the first act of this fascinating drama. The 
second act, exhibiting the same pair of fiends, 
after a lapse of fifteen years, is replete with 


appropriate fraud, heartlessness, and misery. 
But the last act crowns all, and completes the 
“ moral lesson.” Here, after another fifteen 
years passed in the preparatory school of guilt, 
the hero verging on old age is represented as 
in the most squalid penury—an outcast from 
society, starving with a wife bent down by 
suffering, and a family of most miserable 
children crying for bread. His first exploit is 
to plunder a traveller, murder him, and hide 
his body in the sand; but this is little; the 
horror is only beginning. While his last 
murder is literally “ sticking on his hands,” 
his old tempter and companion, who had at¬ 
tempted to seduce his wife and had utterly 
blasted his fortunes, enters his hut, ragged and 
destitute, and by a few sentences rekindles the 
old love of play, and engages him in schemes 
of fraudulent gaming. After this little scene 
of more subdued interest, the party leave the 
hut to inter the corpse of the assassinated tra¬ 
veller, and give opportunity for the entrance 
of the eldest son of the hero, and his recogni¬ 
tion by his mother. In her brief absence, con¬ 
trived for this special occasion, the friends re¬ 
solve on murdering the youth, of whose name 
they are ignorant; the father watches while 
his familiar stabs the stranger on his couch; 
and just as the full horror is discovered, a 
thunderbolt sets fire to the dwelling of iniquity, 
and the father hurls his tempter into the flames 
and follows him! Such is the piece which has 
delighted the dainty critics of Paris, who revolt 
from Julius Caesar as bloody, and characterize 
Hamlet as “ the work of a drunken savage.” 

But the most offensive circumstance attend¬ 
ant on the production of this bloody trash is 
the pretence that it is calculated to advance 
the cause of morality by deterring from the 
passion of gambling. What a libel is this on 
poor human nature! Of what stuff must that 
nature be made, if it could receive benefit from 
such shocking pictures as representations af¬ 
fecting it nearly ! No longer must we regard 
it as a thing of passion and weakness,—erring, 
frail, and misguided, yet full of noble impulses 
and gentle compassions and traits, indicating 






120 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


a heavenly origin and an immortal home; but 
moulded of low selfishness, and animated by 
demoniac fury. If earth has ever produced 
such beings as are here exposed on the scene, 
they are not specimens of any class of hu¬ 
manity, but its monsters. And on what minds 
is the exhibition to operate 1 On such as con¬ 
tain within themselves a conscious disposition 
to its atrocities, if any such there be, or on the 
rest of mankind, who sicken at the sight 1 The 
first are far beyond the reach of the actor’s 
preaching; the last feel the lesson is not for 
them—if they indulge in gambling, they have 
no .fear of murdering their sons, and “ their 
withers are unwrung.” In the mean time the 
“ moral lesson,” impotent for good, has a mis¬ 
chievous power to wear out the sources of 
sympathy, and to produce a dangerous fami¬ 
liarity with the forms of guilt, which according 
to the solemn warnings of Sir Thomas Browne, 
“ have oft-times a sin even in their histories.” 
“We desire,” continues this quaint but noble 
writer, “no records of such enormities ; sins 
should be accounted new, that so they may be 
esteemed monstrous ; they omit of monstrosity 
as the}’’ fall from their rarity; for jtnen count 
it venial to err with their forefathers, and fool¬ 
ishly conceive they divide a sin in its society. 
The pens of men may sufficiently expatiate 
without these singularities of villany; for, as 
they increase the hatred of vice in some, so do 
they enlarge the theory of wickedness in all. 
And this is one thing that may make latter 
ages worse than the former, for the vicious 
example of ages past poisons the curiosity of 
these present, affording a hint of sin unto se¬ 
duceable spirits, and soliciting those unto the 
imitation of them, whose heads were never so 
perversely principled as to invent them. In 
things of this nature, silence commendeth 
history; it is the veniable part of things lost; 
wherein there must never rise a Pancovillus, 
nor remain any register but that of Hell.” The 
murderous phantasm of Paris will never deter 
men from becoming gamblers, who have the 
fatal passion within them, but it may assist in 
making gamblers demons. 

In London this piece has, we are happy to 
find, succeeded only in the minor houses, 
where the audience are accustomed to look 
for coarse and violent stimulants. It was first 
produced at the Coburgh; and, assisted by 
splendid scenery and powerful melo-dramatic 
acting, was attractive for some time; but has 


given way to real operas, got up with great 
liberality, and the graceful performances of a 
young gentleman named Smith, who acts with 
more taste and feeling than the clever aspirants 
of his age usually exhibit. It was afterwards 
announced at both the winter theatres; but, 
fortunately for Covent-Garden, Drury Lane ob¬ 
tained the precedence, and the good sense of 
Mr. Kemble profited by the example set before 
him. Here the enormities were^ somewhat 
foreshortened, being compressed into two acts, 
but unredeemed by a single trait of kind or 
noble emotion. Cooper, as the more potent 
devil, and Wallack, as his disgusting tool, 
played with considerable energy; but no talent 
could alleviate the mingled sense of sickness 
and suffocation with which their slimy infamies 
oppressed the spectators. Although much 
curiosity had been excited, the piece did not 
draw, and was speedily laid aside; while at 
Covent-Garden, where its announcement was 
dignified by the names of Kemble, Ward, and 
Miss Kelly, it was most wisely suppressed in 
the shell. At the Adelphi, we have been told 
that it was rendered somewhat less revolting; 
but we could not muster courage to face it 
here, or even to endure it in the improved ver¬ 
sion of the Surrey, where, according to the 
play-bills, the Manager has, “after due correc¬ 
tion, reformed his hero, and restored him to 
happiness and virtue.” What a fine touch of 
maudlin morality! To hear Elliston deliver 
it from the stage with all the earnestness of his 
mock-heroic style, we would undergo the purga¬ 
tory with which he threatens us. He is the 
reforming Quaker of dramatic legislation, and 
his stage, during the run of the piece, was a 
court of ease to Brixton, as Drury-Lane was 
to Newgate. Nothing can equal the benevolent 
discrimination of his theory, except that of a 
popular preacher whom we once heard depre¬ 
cating the orthodox doctrine of the eternity of 
future punishment, and cheering his audience 
with the invigorating hope, that, after being 
tormented for three hundred and sixty-five 
thousand years, the wicked would be made 
good and happy. We are thankful, neverthe¬ 
less, that Mr. Elliston’s tread-mill for gamblers 
has rested with the axes and ropes of his more 
sanguinary rivals; and that the young geiflle- 
men addicted to play have finished their lesson. 
How it may operate in Paris and the neigh¬ 
bourhood of St. James’s, will be ascertained 
in the ensuing winter. 



ON THE LATE WILLIAM HAZLITT. 


131 


ON THE INTELLECTUAL CHARACTER OF THE LATE 

WILLIAM HAZLITT. 

[From “The Examiner” and “The Review of William Hazlitt.”] 


As an author, Mr. Hazlitt may be contem¬ 
plated principally in three aspects,—as a moral 
and political reasoner; as an observer of cha¬ 
racter and manners ; and as a critic in litera¬ 
ture and painting. It is in the first character 
only, that he should be followed with caution. 
His metaphysical and political essays contain 
rich treasures, sought with years of patient 
toil, and poured forth with careless prodigality, 
—materials for thinking, a small part of which 
wisely employed, will enrich him who makes 
them his own,—but the choice is not wholly 
unattended with perplexity ai>d danger. He 
had, indeed, as passionate a desire for truthj 
as others have for wealth, or power, or fame. 
The purpose of his research was always steady 
and pure; and no temptation from without 
could induce him to pervert or to conceal the 
faith that was in him. But, besides that love 
of truth, that sincerity in pursuing it, and that 
boldness in telling it, he had earnest aspira¬ 
tions after the beautiful, a strong sense of 
pleasure, an intense consciousness of his own 
individual being, which broke the current of 
abstract speculation into dazzling eddies, and 
sometimes turned it astray. The vivid sense 
of beauty may, indeed, have fit home in the 
breast of the searcher after truth,—but then he 
must also be endowed with the highest of all 
human faculties, the great mediatory and inter¬ 
fusing power of imagination, which presides 
supreme in the mind, brings all its powers and 
impulses into harmonious action, and becomes 
itself the single organ of all. At its touch, 
truth becomes visible in the shapes of beauty; 
the fairest of material things appear the living 
symbols of airy thought; and the mind appre¬ 
hends the finest affinities of the worlds of sense 
and of spirit “in clear dream and solemn 
visiont” By its aid the faculties are not only 
balanced, but multiplied into each other; are 
pervaded by one feeling, and directed to one 
issue. But, without it, the inquirer after truth 
will sometimes be confounded by too intense a 
yearning after the grand and the lovely,—not, 
indeed, by an elegant taste, the indulgence of 
which is a graceful and harmless recreation 
amidst severer studies, but by that passionate 
regard which quickens the pulse, and tingles 
in the veins, and “hangs upon the beatings of 
the heart.” Such was the power of beauty in 
Hazlitt’s mind; and the interfusing faculty was 
wanting. The spirit, indeed, was willing, but 
the flesh was strong; and when these contend, 
it is not difficult to foretell which will obtain 
the mastery; for “ the power of beauty shall 
sooner transform honesty from what it is into 
a bawd, than the power of honesty shall trans¬ 
form beauty into its likeness.” How this 
some-time paradox became exemplified in the 
writings of one whose purpose was always 
- 16 


single, may be traced in the history of his mind, 
at which it may be well to glance before ad¬ 
verting to the examples. 

William Hazlitt was the son of a dissenting 
minister, who presided over a small Unitanan 
congregation at Wem, in Shropshire. His 
father was one of those blameless enthusiasts 
who, taking only one view of the question be¬ 
tween right and power, embrace it with single¬ 
ness of heart, and hold it fast with inflexible 
purpose. He cherished in his son that attach¬ 
ment to truth for its own sake, and those habits 
of fearless investigation which are the natural 
defences of a creed maintaining its ground 
against the indolent force of a wealthy es¬ 
tablishment, and the fervid attacks of combin¬ 
ing sectaries, without the fascinations of mys¬ 
tery or terror. In the solitude of the countrj', 
his pupil learned, at an early age, to think. 
But that solitude was something more to him 
than a noiseless study, in which he might fight 
over the battle between Filmer and Locke ; or 
.exult on the shattered dogmas of Calvin ; or 
rivet the links of the immortal chain of neces¬ 
sity, and strike with the force of ponderous 
understanding, on all men'tal fetters. A tem¬ 
perament of unusual ardour glowed amidst 
those lonely fields, and imparted to the silent 
objects of nature a weight of interest akin to 
that with which Rousseau has oppressed the 
picture of his early years. He had not then,, 
nor did he find till long afterwards, power to 
imbody his meditations and feelings in words; 
the consciousness of thoughts which he could 
not hope adequately to express, increased his 
natural reserve; and he turned for relief to' 
the art of painting, in which he might silently 
realize his dreams of beauty, and repay the 
bounties of nature. A few old prints from the 
old masters awakened the spirit of emulation 
within him; the sense of beauty became 
identified in his mind with that of glory and 
duration; while the peaceful labour calmed the 
tumult in his veins, and gave steadiness to his 
pure and distant aim. He pursued the art 
with an earnestness and patience which he 
vividly describes in his essay “ On the Plea¬ 
sure of Painting;” and to which he frequently 
reverts in some of his most exquisite passages; 
and, although in this, his chosen pursuit, he 
failed, the passionate desire for success, and 
the long struggle to attain it, left deep traces 
in his mind, heightening his strong perception 
of external things, and mingling, with all the 
thoughts, shapes and hues which he had vainly 
striven to render immortal. A painter may 
acquire a fine insight into the nice distinctions 
of character,—he may copy manners in words 
as he does in colours,—but it may be appre¬ 
hended that his course as a severe reasoner 
will be somewhat “troubled with thick coming 
* L 




122 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


fancies.” And if the successful pursuit of art 
may thus disturb the process of abstract con¬ 
templation, how much more may an unsatis¬ 
fied passion ruffle it, bid the dark threads of 
thought glitter with radiant fancies unrealized, 
and clothe its diagrams with the fragments of 
picture which the hand refused to execute! 
What wonder, if, in the mind of an ardent 
youth, thus struggling in vain to give palpable 
existence to the shapes of loveliness which 
haunted him, “the homely beauty of the good 
old cause” should assume the fascinations not 
properly its own ! At this time, also, while at 
once laborious and listless, he became the 
associate of a band of young poets of power 
and promise such as England had not pro¬ 
duced for two centuries, whose genius had 
been awakened by the rising sun of liberty, 
and breathed forth most eloquent music. 
Their political creed resembled his own; yet, 
for the better and more influential part, they 
were poets, not metaphysicians ; and his inter¬ 
course with them tended yet farther to spread 
the noble infection of beauty through all his 
thoughts. That they should have partially 
understood him at that time was much, both 
for them and for him; for the faculty of ex¬ 
pression remained imperfect and doubtful until 
quickened at that chosen home of genius and 
kindness, the fire-side of the author of “ John 
Woodvil.” There his bashful struggles to ex¬ 
press the fine conceptions with which his 
bosom laboured were met by entire sympathy ; 
there he began to stammer out his just and 
original notions of Chaucer and Spenser, and 
old English writers, less talked of, though not 
less known, by their countrymen ; there he 
was understood and cheered by one who 
thought after their antique mode, and wrote in 
their spirit, and by a lady, “sister every way” 
to his friend, whose fine discernment of his 
first efforts in conversation, he dwelt upon 
with gratitude even when most out of humour 
with the world. He wrote then slowly, and 
with great difficulty, being, as he himself states 
in his “Letter to Gifford,” “eight years in 
writing as many pages;” in that austere labour 
the sense of the beautiful was rebuked, and 
his first work, the “Essay on the Principles 
of Human Action,” is composed in a style as 
dry and hard as a mathematical demonstration. 
But when his pen was loosed from its long 
bondage, the accumulated stores of thought 
and observation pressed upon him; images of 
beauty hovered round him ; deep-rooted attach¬ 
ments to books and works of art, which had 
been friends to him through silent years, 
glowed for expression, and a long arrear of 
personal resentments struggled to share in the 
masterdom of conscious power. The room of 
Imagination, which would have enabled him 
to command all his resources, and place his 
rare experiences to their true account, was 
supplied by a will —sufficiently sturdy by na¬ 
ture, and made irritable and capricious by the 
most inexcusable misrepresentation and abuse 
with which the virulence of party-spirit ever 
disgraced literary criticism. His works were 
shamelessly garbled; his person and habits 
slandered; and volumes, any one page of 
which contained thought sufficient to supply a 


whole “Quarterly Review,” were dismissed 
with affected contempt, as the drivelling of an 
impudent pretender, whose judgment was to 
be estimated by an enthusiastic expression 
torn from its context, and of whose English 
style a decisive specimen was found in an 
error of the press. Thus was a temperament, 
always fervid, stung into irregular action ; the 
strong regard to things was matched by as 
vivid a dislike of persons ; and the sense of 
injury joined with the sense of beauty to dis¬ 
turb the solemn musings of the philosopher 
and the great hatreds of the patriots. 

One of the most remarkable effects of the 
strong sense of the personal on Hazl ill’s abstract 
speculations, is a habit of confounding his own 
feelings and experiences in relation to a sub¬ 
ject with proofs of some theory which had 
grown out of them, or had become associated 
with them. Thus, in his “Essay on the Past 
and the Future,” he asserts the startling propo¬ 
sition, that the past is, at any given moment, 
of as much consequence to the individual as 
the future; that he has no more actual interest 
in what is to come than in what has gone by, 
except so far as he may think himself able to 
avert the future by action; that whether he 
was put to torture a year ago, or anticipates the 
rack a year hence, is of no importance, if his 
destiny is so fixed that no effort can alter it; 
and this paradox its author chiefly seeks to 
establish by beautiful instances of what the 
past, as matter of contemplation, is to thought¬ 
ful minds, and in fine glances at his individual 
history. The principal sophism consists in 
varying the aspect in which the past and future 
are viewed;—in one paragraph, regarding 
them as apart from personal identity and con¬ 
sciousness as if a being, who was “ not a child 
of time,” looked down upon them; and, in 
another, speaking in his own person as one 
who feels the past as well as future in the in¬ 
stant. When the quarrels with a supposed 
disputant who would rather not have been 
Claude, because then all would have been 
over with him, and asserts that it cannot sig¬ 
nify when we live, because the value of exist¬ 
ence is not altered in the course of centuries, 
he takes a stand apart from present conscious¬ 
ness and the immediate question—for the 
desire to have been Claude could only be 
gratified in the consciousness of having been 
Claude—which belongs to the present moment, 
and implies present existence in the party 
making the choice, though for such a moment 
he might be willing to die. He strays still 
wider from the subject when he observes a 
treatise on the Millennium is dull; but asks 
who was ever weary of reading the fables of 
the Golden Age? for both fables essentially 
belong neither to past nor future, and depend 
for their interest, not on the time to which they 
are referred, but the vividness with which 
they are drawn. But supposing the Golden 
Age and the Millennium to be happy conditions 
of being—which to our poor, frail, shivering 
virtue they are not —and the proposal to be 
made, whether we would remember the first, or 
enter upon the last, surely we-should “hail the 
coming on of time,” and prefer having our 
store of happiness yet to expend, to the know- 





ON THE LATE WILLIAM HAZLITT. 


123 


ledge that we had just spent it! When Mr. 
Hazlitt instances the agitation of criminals 
before their trial, and their composure after 
their conviction, as proofs that if a future 
event is certain, “ it gives little more disturb¬ 
ance or emotion than if it had already taken 
place, or were something to happen in another 
state of being, or to another person,” he gives 
an example which is perfectly fair, but which 
every one sees is decisive against his theory. 
If peace followed when hope was no longer 
busy; if the quiet of indifference was the same 
thing as the stillness of despair; if the palsy 
of fear did not partially anticipate the stroke 
of death, and whiten the devoted head with 
premature age; there might be some ground 
for this sacrifice of the future at the shrine of 
die past; but the poor wretch who grasps the 
hand of the chaplain or the under-sheriff’s 
clerk, or a turnkey, or an alderman, in con¬ 
vulsive agony, as his last hold on life, and 
declares.that he is happy, would tell a different 
tale! It seems strange that so profound a 
thinker, and so fair a reasoner, as Mr. Hazlitt, 
should adduce such a proof of such an hypo¬ 
thesis—but the mystery is solved when we 
regard the mass of personal feeling he has 
brought to bear on the subject, and which has 
made his own view of it unsteady. All 
this picturesque and affecting retrospection 
amounts to nothing, or rather tells against the 
argument; because the store of contemplation 
which is, will ever be while consciousness re¬ 
mains; nay, must increase even while we 
reckon it, as the present glides into the past, 
and turns another arch over the cave of me¬ 
mory. This very possession which he would 
set against the future is the only treasure 
which with certainty belongs to it, and of 
which no change of fortune can deprive him; 
and, therefore, it is clear that the essayist mis¬ 
takes a sentiment for a demonstration, when 
he expatiates upon it as proof of such a doc¬ 
trine. There is nothing affected in the asser¬ 
tion—no desire to startle—no playing with the 
subject or the reader; for of such intellectual 
trickeries he was incapable; but an honest 
mistake into which the strong power of per¬ 
sonal recollection, and the desire to secure it 
within the lasting fret-work of a theory, drew 
him. So, when wearied with the injustice 
done to his writings by the profligate misre¬ 
presentations of the government critics, and the 
slothful acquiescence of the public, and con¬ 
trasting with it the success of the sturdy play¬ 
ers at his favourite game of fives, which no one 
could question, he wrote elaborate essays* to 
prove the superiority of physical qualifications 
to those of intellect—full of happy illustrations 
and striking instances, and containing one in¬ 
imitable bit of truth and pathos “ On the Death 
of Cavanagh,”—but all beside the mark —proving 
nothing but that which required no proof—that 
corporeal strength and beauty are more speed¬ 
ily and more surely appreciated than the pro¬ 
ducts of genius; and leaving the essential 
differences of the two, of the transitory and the 
lasting—of that which is confined to a few 


““On the Indian Jugglers,” and “On the Disadvan¬ 
tages of Intellectual Superiority.” 


barren spectators, and that which is diffused 
through the hearts and affections of thousands, 
and fructifies and expands in generations yet 
unborn, and connects its author with far dis¬ 
tant times, not by cold renown, but by the links 
of living sympathy—to be exemplified in the 
very essay which would decry it, and to be 
nobly vindicated by its author at other times, 
when he shows, and makes us feel, that 
“words are the only things which last for 
ever.”* So his attacks on the doctrine of 
utility, which were provoked by the cold ex¬ 
travagancies of some of its supporters, consist 
of noble and passionate eulogies on the graces, 
pleasures, and ornaments, of life, which leave 
the theory itself, with which all these are con¬ 
sistent, precisely where it was. So his “ Essays 
on Mr. Owen’s View of Society” are full of 
exquisite banter, well-directed against the in¬ 
dividual : of unanswerable expositions of the 
falsehood of his pretensions to novelty and of 
the quackery by which he attempted to render 
them notorious; of happy satire against the 
aristocratic and religious patronage which he 
sought and obtained for schemes which were 
tolerated by the great because they were 
believed by them to be impracticable; but the 
truth of the principal idea itself remains almost 
untouched. In these instances the personal 
has prevailed over the abstract in the mind of 
the thinker; his else clear intellectual vision 
has been obscured by the intervention of his 
own recollections, loves, resentments, or fan¬ 
cies; and the real outlines of the subject have 
been overgrown by the exuberant fertility of 
the region which bordered upon them. 

The same causes diminished the immediate 
effect of Mr. Hazlitt’s political writings. It 
was the fashion to denounce him as a sour 
Jacobin ; but no description could be more un¬ 
just. Under the influence of some bitter feel¬ 
ing, he occasionally poured out a furious in¬ 
vective against those whom he regarded as the 
enemies of liberty, or the apostates from its 
cause; but, in general, his force was diverted 
(unconsciously to himself) by figures and 
fantasies, by fine and quaint allusions, by 
quotations from his favourite authors, intro¬ 
duced with singular felicity as respects the 
direct link of association, but tending by their 
very beauty to unnerve the mind of the reader, 
and substitute the sense of luxury for that of 
hatred or anger. In some of his essays, when 
the reasoning is most cogent, every other sen¬ 
tence contains some exquisite passage from 
Shakspeare, or Fletcher, or Wordsworth, trail¬ 
ing after it a line of golden associations—or 
some reference to a novel, over which we have 
a thousand times forgotten the wrongs of 
mankind; till in the recurring shock of plea¬ 
surable surprise, the main argument escapes 
us. When, for example, he compares the po¬ 
sition of certain political waverers to that of 
Clarissa Harlowe when Lovelace would re¬ 
peat his outrage, and describes them as having 
been, like her, trepanned into a house of ill- 
fame near Pall Mall, and defending their soiled 
virtue with their pen-knives,—who, at the 
suggestion of the stupendous scene which the 


*“On Thought and Action.” 







.24 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


allusion directly revives, can think or care 
about the renegade of yesterday? Here, again, 
is felt the want of that imagination which 
brings all things into one, tinges all our 
thoughts and sympathies with one joyous or 
solemn hue, and rejects every ornament which 
does not heighten or prolong the feeling which 
is proper to the design. Even when Mr. Haz- 
litt retaliates on Mr. Southey for attacking his 
old co-patriots, the poetical associations which 
bitter remembrance suggests almost neutralize 
the attack, else overpowering; he brings every 
“ flower which sad embroidery wears to strew 
the laureate hearse,” where patriotism is in¬ 
terred ; and diverts our indignation and his 
own by affecting references to an early friend¬ 
ship. So little does he regard the unity of his 
compositions, that in his “Letter to Gifford,” 
after a series of the most just and bitter retorts 
on his maligner,—“the fine link which con¬ 
nected literature with the police”—he takes a 
fancy to teach that “ Ultra-crepidarian Critic” 
his own theory of the natural disinterestedness 
of the human mind, and developes it—not now 
in the mathematical style in which it was first 
enunciated, but “o’er-informed” with the glow 
of sentiment, and terminating in an eloquent 
rhapsody. This latter part of the letter is one 
of the noblest of his effusions, but it entirely 
destroys the first in the mind of the reader; 
for who, when thus contemplating the living 
wheels on which human benevolence is borne 
onward in its triumphant career, and the spirit 
with which they are instinct, can think of the 
poor wasp settled upon them, and who was 
just before transfixed with minikin arrows? 

But the most signal result which “ the shows 
of things” had over Mr. Hazlitt’s mind, was 
his setting up the Emperor Napoleon as his 
idol. He strove to justify his predilection to 
himself by referring it to the revolutionary 
origin of his hero, and the contempt with 
which he trampled upon the claims of legiti¬ 
macy, and humbled the pride of kings. But 
if his “only love” thus sprung “from his only 
hate,” it was not wholly cherished by antipa¬ 
thies. If there had been nothing in his mind 
which tended to aggrandizement and glory, 
and which would fain reconcile the principles 
of liberty with the lavish accumulation of 
power, he might have desired the triumph of 
young tyranny over legitimate thrones ; but he 
would scarcely have watched its progress 
“like a lover and a child.” His feeling fur 
Bonaparte was not a sentiment of respect for 
fallen greatness: not a desire to trace “the 
soul of goodness in things evil;” not a loath¬ 
ing of the treatment the emperor received 
from “his cousin kings” in the day of adver¬ 
sity ; but entire affection mingling with the 
current of the blood, and pervading the moral 
and intellectual being.* Nothing less than 


* Proofs of the singular fascination which the idea of 
Bonaparte created on Mr. Hazlitt’s mind abound in his 
writings. One example of which suffices to show how 
it mingled with his most passionate thoughts—his earli¬ 
est aspirations, and his latest sympathies. Having re¬ 
ferred to some association which revived the memory 
of his happiest days, he breathes out into this rhapsody : 
—“As I look on the long-neglected copy of the Death 
of Clorinda, golden dreams play upon the canvas as 
they used when I painted it. The flowers of Hope and 
Joy springing up in my mind, recall the time when they 


this strong attachment, at once personal and 
refined, would have enabled him to encounter 
the toil of collecting and arranging facts and 
dates for four volumes of narrative ;—a drudg¬ 
ery too abhorrent to his habits of mind as a 
thinker, to be sustained by any stimulus which 
the prospect of wealth or reputation could 
supply. It is not so much in the ingenious 
excuses which he discovers for the worst acts 
of his hero, even for the midnight execution 
of the Duke d’Enghein, and the invasion of 
Spain, that the stamp of personal devotion is 
obvious, as in the graphic force with which 
he has delineated the short-lived splendours 
of the Imperial Court, and “the trivial fond 
records ” he has gathered of every vestige of 
human feeling by which he could reconcile 
the Emperor to his mind. The first two vo¬ 
lumes of the “Life of Napoleon,” although 
redeemed by scattered thoughts of true origi¬ 
nality and depth, are often confused and spi¬ 
ritless ; the characters of the principal revo¬ 
lutionists are drawn too much in the style of 
caricatures; but when the hero throws all his 
rivals into the distance, erects himself the in¬ 
dividual enemy of England, consecrates his 
power by religious ceremonies, and defines it 
by the circle of a crown, the author’s strength 
becomes concentrated, his narrative assumes 
an epic dignity and fervour, and glows with 
“the long-resounding march and energy di¬ 
vine.” How happy and proud is he to picture 
the meeting of Napoleon with the Pope, and 
the grandeurs of the coronation ! How he 
grows wanton in celebrating the fetes of the 
Tuileries, as “presenting all the elegance of 
enchanted pageants,” and laments them as 
“ gone like a fairy revel!” How he “ lives 
along the line ” of Austerlitz, and rejoices in 
its thunder, and hails its setting sun, and ex¬ 
ults in the minutest details of the subsequent 
meeting of the conquered sovereigns with the 
conqueror! How he expatiates on the fatal 
marriage with the “deadly Austrian,” (as Mr. 
Cobbett justly called that most heartless of her 
sex,) as though it were a chapter in romance, 
and added the grace of beauty to the imperial 
picture ! How he kindles with martial ardour 
as he describes the preparations for the expe¬ 
dition against Russia; musters the myriads 
of barbarians with a show of dramatic jus¬ 
tice; and fondly lingers among the brief tri¬ 
umphs oY Moskwa on the verge of the terrible 
catastrophe ! The narrative of that disastrous 
expedition is, indeed, written with a master’s 
hand; we see the “Grand Army” marching 
to its destruction through the immense per¬ 
spective ; the wild hordes flying before the 
terror of its “coming;” the barbaric magnifi¬ 
cence of Moscow towering in the far distance ; 
and when we gaze upon the sacrificial confla¬ 
gration of the Kremlin, we feel that it is the 
funeral pile of the conqueror’s glories. It is 
well for the readers of this splendid work, 
that there is more in it of the painter than of 

first bloomed there. The years that are fled knock at 
the door and enter. I am in the Louvre once more 
The Sun of Austerlitz has not set. It shines hero, in my 
heart; and he the Son of Glory is not dead , nor ever shall 
be to me. I am as when my life began.”—See the Essay 
on “Great and Little Things.” Table Talk , vol. ii., p 





ON THE LATE WILLIAM HAZLITT. 


125 


the metaphysician; that its style glows with 
the fervour of battle, or stiffens with the spoils 
of victory ; yet we wonder that this monument 
to imperial grandeur should be raised from 
the dead level of Jacobinism by an honest and 
profound thinker. The solution is, that al¬ 
though he was this, he was also more—that, 
in opinion, he was devoted to the cause of the 
people; but that, in feeling, he required some 
individual object of worship; that he selected 
Napoleon as one in whose origin and career 
he might impersonate his principles and gra¬ 
tify his affections; and that he adhered to his 
own idea with heroic obstinacy when the 
“child and champion of the republic ” openly 
sought to repress all feeling and thought, but 
such as he could cast in his own iron moulds, 
and scoffed at popular enthusiasm even while 
it bore him to the accomplishment of his lof¬ 
tiest desires. 

If the experiences and the sympathies which 
acted so powerfully on the mind of Hazlitt, 
detract somewhat from his authority as a rea¬ 
soned they give an unprecedented interest 
and value to his essays on character and 
books. The excellence of these works differ 
not so much in degree as in kind from that of 
all others of their class. There is a weight 
and substance about them, which makes us 
feel that amidst all their nice and dexterous 
analysis, they are, in no small measure, crea¬ 
tions. The quantity of thought which is ac¬ 
cumulated upon his favourite subjects; the 
variety and richness of the illustrations; and 
the strong sense of beauty and pleasure which 
pervades and animates the composition, give 
them a place, if not above, yet apart from the 
writings of all other essayists. They have 
not, indeed, the dramatic charm of the old 
“Spectator” and “Tattler,” not the airy touch 
with which Addison and Steele skimmed along 
the surface of many-coloured life; but they 
disclose the subtle essences of character, and 
trace the secret springs of the affections with 
a more learned and penetrating spirit of hu¬ 
man dealing than either. The intense interest 
which he takes in his theme, and which 
prompts him to adorn it lavishly with the 
spoils of many an intellectual struggle, com¬ 
mends it to the feelings as well as the under¬ 
standing, and makes the thread of his argu¬ 
ment seem to us like a fibre of our own 
moral being. Thus his essay on “ Pedantry” 
seems, within its few pages, to condense not 
only all that can be said, but all that can be 
fell, on the happiness which we derive from 
the force of habit, on the softening influences 
of blameless vanity, and on the moral and pic¬ 
turesque effect of those peculiarities of man¬ 
ner, arising from professional associations, 
which diversify and emboss the plain ground¬ 
work of modern life. Thus, his character of 
Rousseau is not merely a just estimate of the 
extraordinary person to whom it relates, but 
is so imbued with the predominant feeling of 
his works that they seem to glide in review 
before us, and we rise from the essayist as if 
we had pursued the “ Confessions” anew with 
him, and had partaken in the strong sympathy 
which they excited within him during the hap¬ 
piest summers of his youth. Thus, his paper 


on “ Actors and Acting,” breathes the very 
soul of abandonment to impulse and heedless 
enjoyment, affording glimpses of those brief 
triumphs which make a stroller’s career “less 
forlorn,” and presenting mirrors to the stage 
in which its grand and affecting images, them¬ 
selves reflected from nature, are yet farther 
prolonged and multiplied. His individual 
portraits of friends and enemies are hit off 
with all the strength of hatred or affection, 
neither mitigated by courtesy nor mistrust:— 
partial, as they embrace, at most, only one as¬ 
pect of the character, but startling in their vi¬ 
vidness, and productive of infinite amusement 
to those who are acquainted with the originals. 
It must be conceded that these personal refer¬ 
ences were sometimes made with unjustifiable 
freedom; but they were more rarely prompted 
by malice prepense, than by his strong con¬ 
sciousness of the eccentricities of mankind, 
which pressed upon him for expression, and 
irritated his pen into satiric picture. And 
when this keen observance was exerted on 
scenes in which he delighted—as the Wednes¬ 
day evening parties of Mr. Lamb’s—how fine, 
how genial, how happy his delineations ! How 
he gathers up the precious moments, when 
poets and artists known to fame, and men of 
fancy and wit yet unexhausted by publication, 
met in careless pleasure; and distils their 
finest essence. And if sometimes the tempta¬ 
tion of making a spiteful hit at one of his 
friends was too urgent for resistance, what 
amends he made by some oblique compliment, 
at once as hearty and as refined as those by 
which Pope has made those whom he loved 
immortal. But these essays, in which the 
spirit of personality sometimes runs riot, are 
inferior, in our apprehension, to those in 
which it warms and peoples more abstracted 
view's of humanity—not purely metaphysical 
reasonings, which it tended to disturb,* nor 
political disquisitions which it checked and 
turned from their aim; but estimates of the 
high condition and solemn incidents of our 
nature. Of this class, his papers on the “Love 
of Life,” on the “ Fear of Death,” on the “Rea¬ 
sons why Distant Objects Please,” on “Anti¬ 
quity,” on the “ Love of the Country,” and on 
“ Living to Oneself,” are choice specimens, 
written with equal earnestness and ingenuity, 
and full of noble pieces of retrospection on 
his own past being. Beyond their immediate 

* Of the writers since Hume, who have written on 
metaphysics, with the severity proper to the subject, 
are Mr. Fearne, the author of the Essay on “ Conscious¬ 
ness,” and Lady Mary Shepherd, whose works on 
“Cause and Effect” are amongst the most remarkable 
productions of the age. Beattie, Dugald Stewart, Dr. 
Brown, and his imitators, turned what should have been 
abstract reasoning “ to favour and to prettincss.” Mr. 
Hazlitt obscured it by thickly clustered associations; 
and Coleridge presented it in the masquerade of a gor¬ 
geous fancy. Lady Mary Shepherd, on the other hand, 
is a thinker of as much honesty as courage ; her specu¬ 
lations are colourless, and leave nothing on the mind 
but the fine-drawn lines of thought. Coleridge, address¬ 
ing the Duchess of Devonshire, on a spirited verse she 
had written on the heroism of Tell, asks— 

“ O lady, nursed in pomp and pleasure, 

Where got ye that heroic measure ?” 

The poet might have found in the reasonings of Lady 
Mary Shepherd a worthier object of admiration than in 
the little stanza which seemed so extraordinary an ef¬ 
fort for a lady of fashion. 

i. 2 




126 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


objects of contemplation, there is always 
opened a moral perspective; and the tender 
hues of memory gleam and tremble over 
them. 

“ Books,” says Mr. Wordsworth, “are a 
substantial world,” and surely those on which 
Hazlitt has expatiated with true regard, have 
assumed, to our apprehensions, a stouter re¬ 
ality since we surveyed them through the me¬ 
dium of his mind. In general, the effect of cri¬ 
ticism, even when fairly and tenderly applied, 
is the reverse of this ; for the very process of 
subjecting the creations of the poet and the no¬ 
velist to examination as works of art, and of 
estimating the force of passion or of habit, as 
exemplified in them, so necessarily implies 
that they are but the shadows of thought, as in¬ 
sensibly to dissipate the illusion which our 
dreamy youth had perchance cast around them. 
But in all that Hazlitt has written on old Eng¬ 
lish authors, he is seldom merely critical. His 
masterly exposition of that huge book of fan¬ 
tastical fallacies, the vaunted “Arcadia” of Sir 
Philip Sidney,* stands almost alone in his 
works as a specimen of the mere power of un¬ 
erring dissection and impartial judgment. In 
the laboratory of his intellect, analysis was 
turned to the sweet uses of alchemy. While 
he discourses of characters he has known the 
longest, he sheds over them the light of his 
own boyhood, and makes us partakers of that 
realizing power by which they become crea¬ 
tures of flesh and blood, with whom we may 
eat, drink, and be merry. He bids us enjoy all 
that he has enjoyed in their society ; invites us 
to gaze, as he did first, on that setting sun 
which Schiller’s heroic Robber watched in his 
sadness, and makes us feel that to us “ that sun 
will never set;” or introduces us to honest old 
Deckar on the borders of Salisbury Plain, 
when he struck a bargain for life with the best 
creation of the poet’s genius. “ After a long 
walk” with him “through unfrequented tracks 
—after starting the hare from the fern, or hear¬ 
ing the wing of the raven rustle above our 
heads, being greeted by the woodman’s stern 
•good night,’ as he strikes into his narrow 
homeward path,” we too “take our ease at our 
inn beside the blazing hearth, and shake hands 
with Signor Orlando Friscobaldo as the oldest 
acquaintance we have.”f He has increased 
our personal knowledge of Don Quixote, of 
John Buncle, of Parson Adams, of Pamela, of 
Clarissa Harlowe, of Lovelace, of Sir Roger de 
Coverly, and a hundred other undying teachers 
of humanity, and placed us on nearer and 
dearer terms with them. His cordial warmth 
brings out their pleasantest and most charac¬ 
teristic traits as heat makes visible the writing 
which a lover’s caution has traced in colourless 
liquid ; and he thus attests their reality with 
an evidence like that of the senses. He restored 
the “ Beggar’s Opera,” which had been long 
treated as a burlesque appendage to the “New¬ 
gate Calendar,” to its proper station ; showing 
how the depth of the design, and the brilliancy 
of the workmanship, had been overlooked in 
the palpable coarseness cf the materials ; and 


* Lectures on the Age of Elizabeth.—Lecture VI. 
t Ibid.—Lecture III. 


tracing instances of pathos and germs of mo¬ 
rality amidst scenes which the world had 
agreed to censure and to enjoy as vulgar and 
immoral.* He revels in the delights of old 
English comedy; exhibits the soul of art in its 
town-born graces, and the spirit of gayety in its 
mirth; detects for us a more delicate flavour 
in the wit of Congreve, and lights up the age 
of Charles the Second, “ when kings and no¬ 
bles led purely ornamental lives,” with the airy 
and harmless splendour in which it streamed 
upon him amidst rustic manners and Presby¬ 
terian virtues. But his accounts of many of 
the dramatists of Shakspeare’s age are less 
happy; for he had no early acquaintance with 
these that he should receive them into his 
own heart, and commend them to ours; he 
read them that he might lecture upon them,— 
and he lectures upon them for effect, not for 
love. With the exception of a single charac¬ 
ter, that of Sir Orlando Friscobaldo, whom he 
recognised at first sight as one with whose qua¬ 
lities he had been long familiar, they did not 
touch him nearly; and, therefore, his com¬ 
ments upon them are comparatively meagre 
and turgid, and he gladly escapes from them 
into “wise saws and modern instances.” The 
light of his own experience does not thicken 
about their scenes. His notices of Marlow, 
Heywood, Middleton, Marston, Deckar, Chap¬ 
man, Webster, and Ford, do not let us half so 
far into the secret of these extraordinary wri¬ 
ters as the notes which Mr. Lamb has scatter¬ 
ed (stray gifts of beauty and wisdom) through 
the little volume of his “Specimens;” imbued 
with the very feeling which swelled and crim¬ 
soned in their intensest passages, and coming 
on the listening mind like strains of antique 
melody, breathed from the midst of that wild 
and solemn region in which their natural ma¬ 
gic wrought its wonders. His regard for Beau¬ 
mont and Fletcher is more hearty, and his ap¬ 
preciation of scattered excellencies in them as 
fine as can be wished; but he does not seem to 
apprehend the pervading spirit of their dramas, 
—the mere spirit of careless gra'ce and fleeting 
beauty, which made the walk of tragedy a 
fairy land; turned passions and motives to its 
own sweet will; annihilated space and time; 
and sheds its rainbow hues with bountiful in¬ 
difference on the just and the unjust; repre¬ 
sented virtue as a happy accident, vice as a 
wayward fancy; and changed one for the other 
in the same person by sovereign caprice, as by 
a touch of Harlequin’s wand, leaving “ nothing 
serious in mortality,” but reducing the struggle 
of life to an heroic game, to be played splen¬ 
didly out, and left without a sigh. Nor does he 
pierce through the hard and knotty rind of Ben 
Jonson’s manner, which alone, in our time, 
has been entirely penetrated by the author of 


# This exquisite morsel of criticism (if that name be 
proper) first appeared in the “MorningChronicle,” as an 
introduction to the account of the first appearance of Miss 
Stephens in “ Polly Peachum” (her second character)— 
an occasion worthy to be so celebrated—but not exciting 
any hope of such an article. What a surprise it was to 
read it for the first time, amidst the tempered patriotism 
and measured praise of Mr. Perry’s columns ! It was 
afterwards printed in the “ Round Table,” and (being 
justly a favourite of its author) found fit place in his 
“ Lectures on the English Poets.”—See Lecture VI. 






ON THE LATE WILLLIAM HAZLITT. 


127 


the “Merchant of London,” who, when a mere I 
lad, grappled with (his tough subject and mas- 
tered it;* and whose long and earnest aspira-j 
tion after a kindred force and beauty with this 
and other idols of his serious boyhood, is not, 
even now, wholly unfulfilled! 

Of Shakspeare’s genius, Mr. Ilazlitt has 
written largely and well ; but there is more 
felicitj r in his incidental references to this 
great subject, than in those elaborate essays 
upon it, which fill the volume entitled “ Cha¬ 
racters of Shakspeare’s Plays.” In reading them 
we are fatigued by perpetual eulogy,—not be¬ 
cause we deem it excessive, but because 
we observe in it a constant straining to ex¬ 
press an admiration too vast for any style. 
There is so much suggested by the poet to 
each individual mind, which blends with, and 
colours its own most profound meditations and 
dearest feelings, without assuming a distinct 
form, that we resent the laborious efforts of 
another to body forth his own ideas of our 
common inheritance, unless they vindicate 
themselves by entire success, as intruding on 
the holy ground of our own thoughts. Mr. 
Lamb’s brief glance at “Lear” is the only in¬ 
stance of a commentary on one of Shakspeare’s 
four great tragedies which ever appeared to us 
entirely worthy of the original; and this, in¬ 
deed, seems to prolong, and even to heighten, 
the feeling of the tremendous scenes to which 
it applies, and to make compensation for dis¬ 
placing our own dim and faint conceptions, 
long cherished as they were, by the huge image 
clearly reflected in another’s mind. There is 
nothing approaching to this excellence in Mr. 
Hazlitt’s account of “Lear,” of “ Hamlet,” of 
“ Othello,” or of “ Macbeth.” He piles epithet 
on epithet in a vain attempt to reach “the 
height of his great argumentor trifles with 
the subject, in despair of giving adequate ex¬ 
pression to his own feelings respecting it. 
Nor is his essay on “ Romeo and Juliet” 
more successful; for here, unable to find lan¬ 
guage which may breathe the sense of love 
and joy which the play awakens, he attacks 
Wordsworth’s “Ode on the Intimations of Im¬ 
mortality in Early Childhood,” because it 
refers the glory of our intellectual being to a 
season antecedent to the dawn of passion ; as 
if there was any common standard for the 
most delicious of all plays of which love is 
the essence, and the noblest train of philoso¬ 
phic thought which ever “voluntary moved 
harmonious numbers;” as if each had not a 
truth of its own ; or as if there was not room 
enough in the great world of poetry for both ! 
When thus reduced by conscious inability to 
grasp the subject, into vague declamation, he 
was lost; but wherever he found “jutting freeze 
or cornice” to lodge the store of his own re¬ 
flections, as in estimating the aristocratic pride 
of “Coriolanus,” he was excellent; still better 
where he could mingle the remembrances of 
sportive childhood with the poet’s fantasies, 
as in describing the “Midsummer Night’s 
Dream;” and best of ail when he could vindi¬ 
cate his own hatred of the sickly cant of mor¬ 
tality, and his sense of hearty and wise enjoy¬ 


* “ Retrospective Review,” vol. i. pp. 181—206. 


ment, by precept and example such as “The 
Twelfth Night” gave him. In these instances, 
his own peculiar faculty, as a commentator on 
the writings of others,—that of enriching his 
criticism by congenial associations, and, at the 
same time infusing into it the spirit of his 
author, thus “ stealing and giving odour”— 
had free scope, while the greatest tragedies 
remained beyond the reach of all earthly in¬ 
fluence, too far withdrawn “in the highest 
heaven of invention,” to be affected by any 
atmosphere of sentiment he might inhale him¬ 
self, or shed around others. 

The strong sense of pleasure, both intelkct- 
ual and physical, naturally produced in Hazl/t 
a rooted attachment to the theatre, where the de 
lights of the mind and the senses are blended; 
where the grandeur of the poet’s conceptions 
is, in some degree, made palpable, and luxury 
is raised and refined by wit, sentiment, and 
fancy. His dramatic criticisms are more 
pregnant with fine thoughts on that bright 
epitome of human life than any others which 
ever were written ; yet they are often more 
successful in making us forget their immediate 
subjects than in doing them justice. He began 
to write with a rich fund of theatrical recollec¬ 
tions ; and, except when Kean, or Miss Ste¬ 
phens, or Liston supplied new and decided im¬ 
pulses, he did little more than draw upon this 
old treasury. The theatre to him was redolent 
of the past; images of Siddons, of Kemble, of 
Bannister, of Jordan, thickened the air; im¬ 
perfect recognitions of a hundred evenings, 
when mirth or sympathy had loosened the 
pressure at the heart, and set the springs of 
life in happier motion, thronged around him, 
and “ more than echoes talked along the walls.” 
He loved the theatre for these associations, and 
for the immediate pleasure which it gave to 
thousands about him, and the humanizing in¬ 
fluences it shed among them, and attended it 
with constancy to the very last;* and to those 
personal feelings and universal sympathies he 
gave fit expression ; but his habits of mind 
were unsuited to the ordinary duties of the 
critic. The players put him out. He could net, 
like Mr. Leigh Hunt, who gave theatrical criti¬ 
cism a place in modern literature, apply his 
graphic powers to a detail of a performance, 
and make it interesting by the delicacy of the 
touch ; encrystal the cobweb intricacies of a 
plot with the sparkling dew of his own fancy 
—bid the light plume wave in the fluttering 
grace of his style—or “ catch ere she fell the 
Cynthia of the minute,” and fix the airy charm 
in lasting words. In criticism, thus just and 
picturesque, Mr. Hunt has never been ap¬ 
proached ; and the wonder is, that, instead of 
falling off with the art of acting, he even grew 
richer; for the articles of the “Tatler” equal¬ 
ling those of the “ Examiner” in niceness of 
discrimination, are superior to them in depth 
and colouring. But Hazlitt required a more 
powerful impulse; he never wrote willingly, 
except on what was great in itself, or, forming 
a portion of his own past being, was great to 
him ; and when both these felicities combined 

♦See his article entitled “The Free Admission,” ia 
the “New Monthly Magazine,” vol. xxix. p. 93; one of 
his last, and one of his most characteristic effusion*. 







128 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


in the subject, he was best of all—as upon 
Kemble and Mrs. Siddons. Mr. Kean satisfied 
the first requisite only, but in the highest pos¬ 
sible degree. His extraordinary vigour struck 
Hazlitt, who attended the theatre for the “ Morn¬ 
ing Chronicle,” on the night of his debut , in 
the very first scene, and who, from that night, 
became the most devoted and efficient of his 
supporters. Yet if, on principle, Hazlitt pre¬ 
ferred Kean to Kemble, and sometimes drew 
parallels between them disparaging to the idol 
of his earlier affections, there is nothing half 
so fine in his eloquent eulogies on the first, as 
in his occasional recurrences to the last, when 
the stately form which had realized full many 
a boyish dream of Roman greatness “came 
back upon his heart again,” and seemed to re¬ 
proach him for his late preference of the pas¬ 
sionate to the ideal. He criticised new plays 
with reluctant and indecisive hand, except 
when strong friendship supplied the place of old 
reccilection, as in the instances of Barry Corn¬ 
wall and Sheridan Knowles—the first of whom, 
not exhausting all the sweetness of his nature 
in scenes of fanciful tenderness and gentle 
sorrow, cheered him by unwearied kindness in 
hours of the greatest need—and the last, as 
kind and as true, had, even from a boy, been the 
object of his wannest esteem. He rejoiced to 
observe his true-hearted pupil manifesting a 
dramatic instinct akin to that of the old masters 
of passion—like them forgetting himself in his 
subject, and contented to see fair play between 
his persons—working all his interest out of 
the purest affections, which might beat in¬ 
deed beneath the armour of old Rome, and 
beside its domestic hearths, but belong to all 
time—and finding an actor who, with taste and 
skill to preserve his unstudied grace, had heart 
enough to send his honest homely touches to 
the hearts of thousands. Would that Hazlitt 
had lived to witness the success of the “ Hunch¬ 
back”—not that it is better than the plays 
which he did see, but that he would have ex¬ 
ulted to find the town surprised for once into 
justice, recognising the pathos and beauty 
which had been among them unappreciated so 
long, and paying part of that debt to the living 
author, which he feared they would leave for 
posterity to acknowledge in vain! 

Mr. Hazlitt’s criticisms on pictures are, as 
we have been informed by persons competent 
to judge, and believe, masterly. Of their jus¬ 
tice we are unable to form an opinion for our¬ 
selves: but we know that they are instinct 
with earnest devotion to art, and rich with il¬ 
lustrations of its beauties. Accounts of paint¬ 
ings are too often either made up of technical 
terms, which convey no meaning to the un¬ 
initiated, or of florid description of the scenes 
represented, with scarce an allusion to the 
skill by which the painter has succeeded in 
emulating nature; but Hazlitt’s early aspira¬ 
tions, and fond endeavours after excellence in 
the art, preserved him effectually from these 
errors. He regarded the subject with a perfect j 
love. No gusty passion here ruffled the course j 
of his thoughts: all his irritability was soothed, 
and all his disappointments forgotten, before 
the silent miracles of human genius ; and his 
own vain attempts, fondly remembered instead : 


of exciting envy of the success of others, 
heightened his sense of their merit, and his 
pleasure and pride in accumulating honours on 
their names. Mr. Hunt says of these essays, 
that they “ throw a light on art as from a 
painted window,”—a sentence which, in its 
few words, characterizes them all, and leaves 
nothing to be wished or added. 

In person, Mr. Hazlitt was of the middle size, 
with a handsome and eager countenance, worn 
by sickness and thought; and dark hair, which 
had curled stiffly over the temples, and was 
only of late years sprinkled with gray. His 
gait was slouching and awkward, and his dress 
neglected; but when he began to talk he could 
not be mistaken for a common man. In the 
company of persons with whom he was not 
familiar his bashfulness was painful: but when 
he became entirely at ease, and entered on a 
favourite topic, no one’s conversation was 
ever more delightful. He did not talk for ef¬ 
fect, to dazzle, or surprise, or annoy, but with 
the most simple and honest desire to make his 
view of the subject entirely apprehended by his 
hearer. There was sometimes an obvious 
struggle to do this to his own satisfaction : he 
seemed labouring to drag his thought to light 
from its deep lurking place ; and, with modest 
distrust of that power of expression which he 
had found so late in life, he often betrayed a 
fear that he had failed to make himself under¬ 
stood, and recurred to the subject again and 
again, that he might be assured he had suc¬ 
ceeded. In argument, he was candid and libe¬ 
ral : there was nothing about him pragmati¬ 
cal or exclusive; he never drove a principle to 
its utmost possible consequences, but like 
Locksley, “allowedfor the wind.” For some 
years previous to his death, he observed an 
entire abstinence from fermented liquors, which 
he had once quaffed with the proper relish he 
had for all the good things of this life, but which 
he courageously resigned when he found the 
indulgence perilous to his health and faculties. 
The cheerfulness with which he made this sa¬ 
crifice always appeared to us one of the most 
amiable traits in his character. He had no 
censure for others, who for the same motives 
were less wise or less resolute; nor did he 
think he had earned, by his own constan¬ 
cy, any right to intrude advice which he 
knew, if wanted, must be unavailing. Nor did 
he profess to be a convert to the general system 
of abstinence which was advocated by one of 
his kindest and stanchest friends: he avowed 
that he yielded to necessity ; and instead of 
avoiding the sight of that which he could no 
longer taste, he was seldom so happy as when 
he sat with friends at their wine, participating 
the sociality of the time, and renewing his own 
past enjoyment in that of his companions, with¬ 
out regret and without envy. Like Dr. John¬ 
son, he made himself poor amends for the loss 
of wine by drinking tea, not so largely, indeed, 
as the hero of Boswell, but at least of equal 
potency—for he might have challenged Mrs. 
Thrale and all her sex to make stronger tea 
than his own. In society, as in politics, he was 
no flincher. He loved “ to hear the chimes at 
midnight,” without considering them as a sum¬ 
mons to rise. At these seasons, when in his 






ON THE LATE WILLIAM HAZLITT. 


129 


happiest mood, he used to dwell on the conver¬ 
sational powers of his friends, and live over 
again the delightful hours he had passed with 
them ; repeat the pregnant puns that one had 
made; tell over again a story with which ano¬ 
ther had convulsed the room; or expand in the 
eloquence of a third: always best pleased when 
he could detect some talent which was unre¬ 
garded by the world, and giving alike, to the 
celebrated and the unknown, due honour. 

Mr. Hazlitt delivered three courses of Lec¬ 
tures at the Surrey Institution, to the matter of 
which we have repeatedly alluded—on The 
English Poets; on The English Comic Writers, 
and on The Age of Elizabeth —before audiences 
with whom he had but “ an imperfect sympa¬ 
thy.” They consisted chiefly of Dissenters, 
who agreed with him in his hatred of Lord 
Castlereagh, but who “ loved no playsof 
Quakers, who approved him as the opponent of 
Slavery and Capital Punishment, but who 
“ heard no music ;” of citizens, devoted to the 
main chance, who had a hankering after “ the 
improvement of the mind,” but to whom his 
favourite doctrine of its natural disinterested¬ 
ness was a riddle; of a few enemies who came 
to sneer; and a few friends, who were eager to 
learn and to admire. The comparative insen¬ 
sibility of the bulk of his audience to his finest 
passages, sometimes provoked him to awaken 
their attention by points which broke the train 
of his discourse, after which he could make 
himself amends by some abrupt paradox which 
might set their prejudices on edge, and make 
them fancy they were shocked. He startled 
many of them at the onset, by observing, that, 
since Jacob’s Dream, “ the heavens have gone 
farther off and become astronomical,”—a fine 
extravagance, which the ladies and gentlemen, 
who had grown astronomical themselves un¬ 
der the preceding lecturer, felt called on to re¬ 
sent as an attack on their severer studies. 
When he read a well-known extract from Cow- 
per, comparing a poor cottager with Voltaire, 
and had pronounced the line “ a truth the bril¬ 
liant Frenchman never knew,” they broke into 
a joyous shout of self-gratulation, that they 
were so much wiser than a wicked Frenchman! 
When he passed by Mrs. Hannah More with 
observing, that “ she had written a great deal 
which he had never read,” a voice gave ex¬ 
pression to the general commiseration and 
surprise, by calling out “More pity for you!” 
They were confounded at his reading with 
more emphasis perhaps than discretion, Gay’s 
epigrammatic lines on Sir Richard Blackstone, 
in which scriptural persons are freely hitched 
into rhyme; but he went doggedly on to the 
end, and, by his perseverance, baffled those 
who, if he had acknowledged himself wrong by 
stopping, would have hissed him without mer¬ 
cy. He once had an edifying advantage over 
them. He was enumerating the humanities 
which endeared Dr. Johnson to his mind, and 
at the close of an agreeable catalogue, men¬ 
tioned, as last and noblest, “his carrying the 
poor victim of disease and dissipation on his 
back through Fleet-street,”—at which a titter 
arose from some, who were struck by the pic¬ 
ture as ludicrous, and a murmur from others, 
who deemed the allusion unfit for ears polite. 

17 


He paused for an instant, and then added in 
his sturdiest and most impressive manner, “an 
act which realizes the parable of the Good Sa¬ 
maritan,” at which his moral and delicate 
hearers shrunk rebuked into deep silence. He 
was not eloquent in the true sense of the term; 
for his thoughts were too weighty to be moved 
along by the shallow stream of feeling which 
an evening’s excitement can rouse. He wrote 
all his lectures, and read them as they were 
written : but his deep voice and earnest manner 
suited his matter well. He seemed to dig into 
his subject—and not in vain. In delivering his 
longer quotations, he had scarcely continuity 
enough for the versification of Shakspeare and 
Milton, “ with linked sweetness long drawn 
out;” but he gave Pope’s brilliant satire and 
divine compliments, which are usually com¬ 
plete within the couplet, with an elegance and 
point which the poet himself would have felt 
as their highest praise. 

Mr. Hazlitt had little inclination to write 
about contemporary authors,—and still less to 
read them. He was with difficulty persuaded 
to look into the Scotch Novels ! but when he 
did so, he found them old in substance though 
new in form, read them with as much avidity 
as the rest of the world, and expressed better 
than any one else what all the world felt about 
them. His hearty love of them, however, did 
not decrease, but aggravate, his dislike of the 
political opinions and practices of their author; 
and yet, the strength of his hatred towards that 
which was accidental and transitory, only set 
off the unabated power of his regard for the 
free and the lasting. Coleridge and Words¬ 
worth were not moderns to him ; for he knew 
them in his youth, which was his own an¬ 
tiquity, and the feelings which were the germ 
of their poetry had sunk deep into his heart. 
His personal acquaintance with them was 
broken before he became known to the world 
as an author, and he sometimes alluded to 
them with bitterness: but he, and he alone, 
has done justice to the immortal works of the 
one, and the genius of the other. The very 
prominence which he gave to them as objects 
of attack, at the time when it was the fashion 
to pour contempt on their names—when the 
public echoed those articles of the “ Edinburgh 
Review” upon them, which they now regard 
with wonder as the curiosities of criticism, 
proved what they still were to him; and, in the 
midst of those attacks, there are involuntary 
confessions of their influence over his mind, 
are touches of admiration, heightened by fond 
regret, which speak more than his elaborate 
eulogies upon them in his “Spirit of the Age.” 
With the exception of the works of these, and 
of two or three friends to whom we have al¬ 
luded, he held modern literature in slight es¬ 
teem ; and he regarded the discoveries of 
science, and the visions of optimism, with an 
undazzled eye. His “large discourse of rea¬ 
son” looked not before, but after. He felt it his 
great duty, as a lover of genius and art, to de¬ 
fend the fame of the mighty dead. When the 
old painters were assailed in “The Catalogue 
Raisonnee of the British Institution,” he was 
“ touched with noble anger.” All his own 
vain longings after the immortality of the works 





130 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


which were libelled,—the very tranquillity and 
beauty they had shed into his soul,—all his 
comprehension of the sympathy and delight of 
thousands, which, accumulating through long¬ 
time, had attested their worth—were fused to¬ 
gether to dazzle and to blast the poor caviller 
who would disturb the judgment of ages. So, 
when a popular poet assailed the fame of 
Rousseau—seeking to reverse the decision of 
posterity on what that great writer had done, 
by fancying the opinion of people of condition 
in his neighbourhood on what he seemed to 
their apprehensions while living with Madame 
dc Warrens, he vindicated the prerogatives of 
genius with the true logic of passion. Few 
things irritated him more than the claims set 
up for the present generation to be wiser and 
better than those which have gone before it. 
He had no power of imagination to embrace 
the golden clouds which hung over the Future, 
but he rested and expatiated in the Past. To 
his apprehension human good did not appear 
a slender shoot of yesterday, like the bean-stalk 
in the fairy-tale, aspiring to the skies, and end¬ 
ing in an enchanted castle, but a huge growth 
of intertwisted fibres, grasping the earth by 
numberless roots, and bearing vestiges of “ a 
thousand storms, a thousand thunders.” 

It would be beside our purpose to discuss 
the relative merits of Mr. Hazlitt’s publica¬ 
tions, to most of which we have alluded in 
passing; or to detail the scanty vicissitudes 
of a literary life. Still less do we feel bound 
to expose or to defend the personal frailties 


which fell to his portion. We have endea¬ 
voured to trace his intellectual character in 
the records he has left of himself in his works, 
as an excitement and a guide to their perusal 
by those who have yet to know them. The 
concern of mankind is with this alone. In 
the case of a profound thinker more than of 
any other, “that which men call evil”—the 
accident of his condition—is interred with 
him, while the good which he has achieved 
lies unmingled and entire. The events of Mr. 
Hazlitt’s true life are not his engagement by 
the “Morning Chronicle,” or his transfer of 
his services to the “Times,” or his introduc¬ 
tion to the “ Edinburgh Review,” or his con¬ 
tracts or quarrels with booksellers; but the 
progress and the development of his under¬ 
standing as nurtured or swayed by his affec¬ 
tions. “His warfare was within;” and its 
spoils are ours! His “thoughts which wan¬ 
dered through eternity ” live with us, though 
the hand which traced them for our benefit is 
cold. His death, though at the age of only 
fifty-two, can hardly be deemed untimely. He 
lived to complete the laborious work in which 
he sought to embalm his idea of his chosen 
hero ; to see the unhoped-for downfall of the 
legitimate throne which had been raised on 
the ruins of the empire ; and to open, without 
exhausting, those stores which he had gathered 
in his youth. If the impress of his power is 
not left on the sympathies of a people, it has 
(all he wished) sunk into minds neither unre¬ 
flecting nor ungrateful. 



ADDITIONAL 


ARTICLES 


THE LATE DOWAGER LADY HOLLAND. 

[Morning Chronicle, Nov. 25, 1845.] 


It seems scarcely fitting that the grave 
should close over the remains of the late Dow¬ 
ager Lady Holland without some passing tri¬ 
bute beyond the paragraph which announces, 
with the ordinary expression of regret, the de¬ 
cease of a widow lady advanced in years, and 
reminds the world of fashion that the event 
has placed several noble families in mourning. 
That event, which a fortnight ago was re¬ 
garded by friendly apprehensions as probably 
at the distance of some years, has not merely 
clouded and impaired the enjoyments of one 
large circle, but bas extinguished for ever a 
spirit of social happiness which has animated 
many, and severed the most genial link of as¬ 
sociation, by which some of the finest minds 
which yet grace the literary and political 
world were connected with the mightiest of 
those which have left us. The charms of the 
celebrated hospitalities of Holland House, in 
the time of its late revered master, have been 
too gracefully developed, by one who has often 
partaken and enhanced them, in the Edinburgh 
Review for July, 1841, to allow a feebler expres¬ 
sion ; but death had not then bestowed the 
melancholy privilege of expatiating on the 
share of its mistress in crowding those me¬ 
morable hours with various pleasure, or on 
the energetic kindness with which she strove, 
against the perpetual sense of unutterable 
loss, to renew some portion of their enjoy¬ 
ments. For the remarkable position she oc¬ 
cupied, during many years of those daily fes¬ 
tivals in which genius, wit, and patriotic hope 
were triumphant, she was eminently gifted. 
While her own remarks were full of fine 
practical sense, and nice observation, her in¬ 
fluence was chiefly felt in the discourse of those 
whom she directed and inspired, and which, 
as she impelled it, startled by the most animated 
contrasts, or blended in the most graceful har¬ 
monies. Beyond any other hostess we ever 
knew—and very far beyond any host—she pos¬ 
sessed the tact of perceiving and the power 
of evoking the various capacities which lurked 
in every part of the brilliant circles she drew 
around her. To enkindle the enthusiasm of 
an artist on the theme over which he had 
achieved the most facile mastery; to set loose 
the heart of the rustic poet, and imbue his 
speech with the freedom of his native hills; 
to draw from the adventurous traveller a 


breathing picture of his most imminent dan¬ 
ger, or to embolden the bashful soldier to dis¬ 
close his own share in the perils and glories 
of some famous battle-field ; to encourage the 
generous praise of friendship, when the speaker 
and the subject reflected interest on each other, 
or win the secret history of some effort which 
had astonished the world or shed new lights 
on science;—to conduct those brilliant deve¬ 
lopments to the height of satisfaction, and 
then to shift the scene by the magic of a word, 
were among her daily successes. And if this 
extraordinary power over the elements of so¬ 
cial enjoyment was sometimes wielded without 
the entire concealment of its despotism ; if a 
decisive check sometimes rebuked a speaker 
who might intercept the variegated beauty of 
Jeffrey’s indulgent criticism, or the jest an¬ 
nounced and self-rewarded in Sydney Smith’s 
delighted and delighting chuckle, the authority 
was too clearly exerted for the evening’s pros¬ 
perity, and too manifestly impelled by an 
urgent consciousness of the value of those 
golden hours which were fleeting within its 
confines, to sadden the enforced silence with 
more than a momentary regret. If ever her 
prohibition, clear, abrupt, and decisive, indi¬ 
cated more than a preferable regard for live¬ 
lier discourse, it was when a depreciatory tone 
was adopted towards genius, or goodness, or 
honest endeavour, or w r hen some friend, per¬ 
sonal or intellectual, was mentioned in slight¬ 
ing phrase. Habituated to a generous partisan¬ 
ship by strong sympathy with a great political 
cause, she carried the fidelity of her devotion 
to that cause into her social relations, and was 
ever the truest and the fastest of friends. 
The tendency, often more idle than malicious, 
to soften down the intellectual claims of the 
absent, which so insidiously besets literary 
conversation, and teaches a superficial insin¬ 
cerity even to substantial esteem and regard, 
found no favour in her presence; and hence 
the conversations over which she presided, 
perhaps beyond all that ever flashed with a 
kindred splendour, were marked by that integ¬ 
rity of good nature which might admit of their 
exact repetition to every living individual 
whose merits were discussed, without the dan¬ 
ger of inflicting pain. Under her auspices, 
not only all critical, but all personal talk was 
tinged with kindness; the strong interest 

131 











132 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


which she took in the happiness of her friends 
shed a peculiar sunniness over the aspects of 
life presented by the common topics of alli¬ 
ances, and marriages, and promotions; and 
not a hopeful engagement, or a happy wed¬ 
ding, or a promotion of a friend’s son, or a 
new intellectual triumph of any youth with 
whose name and history she was familiar, but 
became an event on which she expected and 
required congratulation, as on a part of her 
own fortune. Although there was naturally 
a preponderance in her society of the senti¬ 
ment of popular progress, which once was 
cherished almost exclusively by the party to 
whom Lord Holland was united by sacred ties, 
no expression of triumph in success, no viru¬ 
lence in sudden disappointment, was ever per¬ 
mitted to wound the most sensitive ear of her 
conservative guests. It might be that some 
placid comparison of recent with former times 
spoke a sense of freedom’s peaceful victory; 
or that, on the giddy edge of some great party 
struggle, the festivities of the evening might 
take a more serious cast, as news arrived 
from the scene of contest, and the pleasure be 
deepened with the peril; but the feeling was 
always restrained by the present evidence of 
permanent solaces for the mind, which no po¬ 
litical changes could disturb. If to hail and 
welcome genius—or even talent which revered 
and imitated genius—was one of the greatest 
pleasures of Lord Holland’s life, to search it 


out, and bring it within the sphere of his noble 
sympathy, was the delightful study of her’s. 
How often, during the last half century, has 
the steep ascent of fame been brightened by 
the genial appreciation she bestowed, and the 
festal light she cast on its solitude! How of¬ 
ten has the assurance of success received its 
crowning delight amid the genial luxury of 
her circle, where renown itself has been real¬ 
ized for the first time in all its sweetness! 
How large a share she communicated to the 
delights of Holland House will be understood 
by those who shared her kindness, first in 
South-street, and recently in Stanhope-street, 
where, after Lord Holland’s death, she ho¬ 
noured his memory by cherishing his friends 
and following his example; where, to the last, 
with a voice retaining its girlish sweetness, 
she welcomed every guest, invited or casual, 
with the old cordiality and queenly grace ; 
where authors of every age and school—from 
Rogers, her old and affectionate friend, whose 
first poem illuminated the darkness of the last 
closing century “like a rich jewel in an Ethi- 
op’s ear,” down to the youngest disciple of the 
latest school—found that honour paid to litera¬ 
ture which English aristocracy has too com¬ 
monly denied it; and where, every day, almost 
to her last, added to her claim to be remem¬ 
bered as one who, during a long life, culti¬ 
vated the great art of living happily, by the 
great means of making others happy. 


ADDRESS 

AT THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE MANCHESTER ATHENAEUM, Oct. 23 , 1845 . 

[Manchester Guardian, Oct. 25, 1S45.] 


If there were not virtue in the objects and 
purposes, and power in the affections, which 
have called into life the splendid scene before 
me, capable of emboldening the apprehensive- 
and strengthening the feeble, I should shrink 
at this moment from attempting to discharge 
the duties of the high office to which the kind¬ 
ness of your directors has raised me. When 
I remember that the first of this series of bril¬ 
liant anniversaries, which is still only begin¬ 
ning, was illustrated by the presidency of my 
friend, Mr. Charles Dickens,—who brought to 
your cause not only the most earnest sympathy 
with the healthful enjoyments and steady ad¬ 
vancement of his species, but the splendour 
of a fame as early matured and as deeply im¬ 
pressed on the hearts of his countrymen as that 
of any writer since the greatest of her intellec¬ 
tual eras : when I recollect that his place was 
filled last year by one whose genius, singularly 
diversified and vivid, has glanced with arrowy 
flame over various departments of literature 
and conditions of life, and who was associated 
with kindred spirits, eager to lavish the ardours 
of generous youth, on the noble labour of re¬ 


newing old ties of brotherhood and attachment 
among all classes, ranks, and degrees of 
human family,—I feel that scarcely less than 
the inspiration which breathes upon us here, 
through every avenue of good you have opened, * 
could justify the hope that the deficiencies of 
the chairman of this night may be forgotten in 
the interest and the majesty of his themes. 
Impressive as such an assembly as this would 
be in any place, and under any circumstances, 
it becomes solemn, almost awful, when the 
true significancy of its splendour is unveiled 
to the mind. If we consider that this festival 
of intellect is holden in the capital of a district 
containing, within comparatively narrow con¬ 
fines, a population scarcely less than two mil¬ 
lions of immortal beings, engrossed in a pro¬ 
portion far beyond that of any other in the 
world, in the toils of manufacture and com¬ 
merce ; that it indicates at once an unprece¬ 
dented desire on the part of those elder and 
Wealthier labourers in this region of industry, 
to share with those whom they employ and 
protect, the blessings which equally sweeten 
the lot of all, and the resolution of the young 





ADDRESS AT THE MANCHESTER ATHENAEUM. 


133 


to win and to diffuse them ; that it exhibits 
literature, once the privilege only of a clois¬ 
tered few, supplying the finest links of social 
anion for this vast society, to be expanded by 
those numerous members of the middle class 
whom they are now embracing, and who yet 
comprise, as the poet says, “two-thirds of all 
the virtue that remains,” throughout that greater 
mass which they are elevating, and of whose 
welfare they, in turn, will be the guardians,— 
we teel that this assembly represents objects 
which, though intensely local, are yet of uni¬ 
versal concern, and cease to wonder at that 
familiar interest with which strangers at once 
regard them. 

Personally till a few days ago a stranger to 
almost every member of your institution, or 
rather cluster of institutions, I find now to-day, 
in the little histories of your aims and achieve¬ 
ments, which your reports present, an affinity, 
sudden indeed but lasting, with some of the 
best and happiest passages in a thousand earn¬ 
est and laborious lives. I seem to take my 
place in your lecture room, an eager and 
docile listener, among young men whom daily 
duties preclude from a laborious course of 
studies, to be refreshed, invigorated, enlight¬ 
ened—sometimes nobly elevated, sometimes 
as nobly humbled, by the living lessons of phi¬ 
losophic wisdom—whether penetrating the 
earth or elucidating the heavens, or developing 
the more august wonders of the world which 
lies within our own natures, or informing the 
Present with the spirit of the Past;—happy to 
listen to such lessons from some gifted stran¬ 
ger, or well-known and esteemed professor, 
scattering the gems of knowledge and taste, to 
find root in opening minds ;—but, better still, 
if the effort should be made by one of your¬ 
selves, by a fellow-townsman and fellow- 
student, emboldened and inspirited by the as¬ 
surance of welcome to try some short ex¬ 
cursion of modest fancy, or to illustrate some 
cherished theory by genial examples, and pri¬ 
vileged to taste, in the heartiest applause of 
those who know him best and esteem him most, 
that which, after all, is the choicest ingredient 
in the pleasure of the widest fame. I mingle 
with your Essay and Discussion Class; share 
in the tumultuous but hopeful throbbings of 
some young debater; grow placid as his just 
self-reliance masters-his fears; triumph in his 
crowning success; and understand, in his 
timid acceptance of your unenvying congra¬ 
tulations, at the close of his address, that most 
exquisite pleasure which attends the first as¬ 
surance of ability to render palpable in lan¬ 
guage the products of lonely self-culture, and 
the consciousness that, as ideas which seemed 
obscure and doubtful while they lurked in the 
recesses of the mind, are, by the genial inspi¬ 
ration of the hour, shaped into form and kindled 
into life, they are attested by the understand¬ 
ings and welcomed by the affections of num¬ 
bers. I seek your Library, yet indeed but in 
its infancy, but from w’hence information and 
refined enjoyment speed on quicker and more 
multitudinous wings than from some of the 
stateliest repositories of accumulated and 
cloistered learning, to vindicate that the right 
which the youngest apprentice lad possesses, 


not merely to claim, but to select for his own 
a portion in that inheritance which the mighty 
dead have left to mankind,—secured by the 
magic power of the press, against the decays 
of time and the shocks of fortune; or to exult 
in a communion with the spirit of that mighty 
literature which yet breathes on us fresh from 
the genius of the living; to feel that we live 
in a great and original age of literature, proud 
also in the consciousness that its spirit is not 
only to be felt as animating works elaborately 
constructed to endure, but as, with a noble 
prodigality, diffusing lofty sentiments, spark¬ 
ling wit, exquisite grace, and suggestions even 
for serene contemplation through the most 
rapid effusions, weekly, monthly, daily given 
to the world; and, far beyond the literature 
of every previous age of the world, aiding the 
spirit of humanity, in appreciating the suffer¬ 
ings, the virtues, and the claims of the poor. 
And if I must confess, even when refreshed by 
the invigorating influences of this hour, that I 
can scarcely fancy myself virtuous enough to 
join one of your classes for the acquisition of 
science or language, or young enough to share 
in the exercises of your gymnasium, where 
good spirits and kind affections attend on the 
development of physical energy, there are yet 
some of your gay and graceful intermixtures 
of amusement to which I would gladly claim 
admission. I would welcome that delightful 
alternation of gentle excitement and thought¬ 
ful repose by which your musical entertain¬ 
ments tend to the harmony and proportion of 
life itself. I should rejoice to share in some of 
those Irish Evenings by which our friend Mr. 
Lover has suggested, in its happiest aspects, 
that land which is daily acquiring, I hope, that 
degree of affection and justice which it so 
strongly claims. I would appreciate with the 
heart, if not with the ear, the illustrations of 
Burns, by which some true Scottish melodist 
has made you familiar with that poet, and ena¬ 
bled you to forget labour and care, and walk 
with the inspired rustic “in glory and in joy” 
among his native hills ; and with peculiar gra¬ 
titude to your directors for enabling you to 
snatch from death and time some vestiges of 
departing grandeur in a genial art, which the 
soonest yields to their ravages ;—I would hail 
with you the mightiest and the loveliest dramas 
of the world’s poet, made palpable without the 
blandishments of decoration or scenery by the 
voice of the surviving artist of the Kemble 
name—in whose accents, softened, not sub¬ 
dued, by time, the elder of us may refresh great 
memories of classic grace, heroic daring, and 
softened grief, when he shared the scene with 
his brother and his sister; and those of us who 
cannot vaunt this privilege of age, may guess 
the greatness of the powers which thrilled their 
fathers in those efforts to which your cause— 
the cause of the youth of Manchester—breathing 
into the golden evening of life, a second spring, 
redolent with hope and joy, have lent a more 
than youthful inspiration. And while I am in¬ 
dulging in a participation of your pleasures, 
let me take leave to congratulate you on that 
gracious boon, w’hich I am informed—(and 
rejoice to hear it, as one of the best of all 
prizes and all omens in a young career) your 





134 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


virtues have won for a large number of your 
fellow-workers—that precious Saturday’s half¬ 
holiday—precious almost to man as to boy, 
when manhood, having borrowed the endearing 
name from childhood, seeks to enrich it with 
all that remains to it of childhood’s delights— 
precious as a noble proof of the respect and 
sympathy of the employers for those whose in¬ 
dustry they direct—and most precious of all in 
its results, if, being brightened and graced by 
such images as your association invokes on 
your leisure, it shall leave body and mind more 
fit for the work and service of earth and of 
heaven. 

Thus regarding myself as a partaker, at least 
in thought and in spirit, of the various benefits 
of your association, I would venture to regard 
them less as the appliances by which a few 
may change their station in our external life, 
than as the means of adorning and ennobling 
that sphere of action in which the many must 
continue to move; which, without often en¬ 
kindling an ambition to emulate the immortal 
productions of genius, may enable you the 
more keenly to enjoy, and the more gratefully 
to revere them ; which, if they do not teach you 
the art of more rapidly accumulating worldly 
riches; and if they shall not—because they 
cannot—endow you with more munificent dis¬ 
positions to dispense them than those which 
have made the generosity of Manchester pro¬ 
verbial throughout the Christian world, may 
ensure its happiest and safest direction in time 
to come, by encouraging those who may dis¬ 
pense it hereafter, to associate in youth, with 
the affection of brotherhood, for objects which 
suggest and breathe of nothing but what is 
wise, and good, and kind. It may be, indeed, 
that some master mind, one of those by which 
Providence, in all generations and various con¬ 
ditions of our species, has vindicated the 
Divinity which stirs within it, beyond the 
power of barbarism to stifle, or education to 
improve, or patronage to enslave, may start 
from your ranks into fame, under auspices 
peculiarly favourable for the safe direction of 
its strength; and, if such rare felicity should 
await you, with how generous a pride will you 
expatiate on the greatness which you had 
watched in its dawning, and with how pure a 
satisfaction will your sometime comrade, your 
then illustrious townsman, satiated with the 
applause of strangers, revert to those scenes 
where his genius found its earliest expression, 
and earned its most delightful praise. If an¬ 
other “marvellous boy,” gifted like him of 
Bristol, should now arise in Manchester, his 
“sleepless soul” would not “perish in its 
pride;” his energies, neither scoffed at nor neg¬ 
lected, would ndt be suffered to harden through 
sullenness into despair; but his genius, fos¬ 
tered by timely kindness, and aided by your 
judicious counsel, would spring, in fitting sea¬ 
son, from amidst the protecting cares of admir¬ 
ing friends, to its proper quarry, mindful, 
when soaring loftiest, of the associations and 
scenes among which it was cherished, “ true to 
the kindred points of heaven and home.” But 
it is not in the cultivation and encouragement 
of such rare intellectual prodigies, still less in 
.he formation of a race of imitators of excel¬ 


lence, that I anticipate the best fruits of your 
peaceful victories. A season has arrived in 
the history of mankind, when talents, which in 
darker ages might justify the desire to quit the 
obscure and honourable labours of common 
life in quest of glittering distinction, can now 
only be employed with safety in adorning the 
sphere to which they are native; when of a 
multitude of competitors for public favour, few 
only can arrest attention; and when even of 
those who attain a flattering and merited popu¬ 
larity, the larger number must be content to 
regard the richest hues of their fancy and 
thought, but as streaks in the dawn of that 
jocund day which now “stands tiptoe on the 
misty mountain’s top,” and in the full light of 
which they will speedily be blended. But if it 
is almost “too late to be ambitious,” except on 
some rare occasions, of the immortality which 
earth can bestow; yet for that true immortality 
of which Fame’s longest duration is but the 
most vivid symbol; for that immortality which 
dawns now in the childhood of every man as 
freshly as in the morning of the world, and 
which breaks with as solemn a foreshadowing 
in the soul of the most ordinary faculties, as 
in that of the mightiest poet; for that immor¬ 
tality, the cultivation of wisdom and beauty is 
as momentous now as ever, although no eyes, 
but those which are unseen, may take note 
how they flourish. In the presence of that 
immortality, how vain appears all undue rest¬ 
lessness for a little or a great change in our 
outward earthly condition! How worse than 
idle all assumptions of superior dignity of one 
mode of honourable toil to another!—how 
worthless all differences of station, except so 
far as station may enable men to vindicate 
some everlasting principle, to exemplify some 
arduous duty, to grapple with some giant 
oppression, or to achieve the blessings of those 
who are ready to perish! How trivial, even 
as the pebbles and shells upon “ this end and 
shoal of time,” seem all those immunities 
which can only be spared by fortune, to be 
swept away by death, compared with those 
images and thoughts, which, being reflected 
from the eternal, not only through t the clear 
meridian of holy writ, but, though more dimly, 
through all that is affecting in history, exqui¬ 
site in art, suggestive in eloquence, profound 
in science, and divine in poetry, shall not only 
outlast all the chances and changes of this 
mortal life, but shall defy the chilness of the 
grave! Believe me, there is no path more 
open to the influences of heaven, than the 
common path of daily duty; on that path the 
lights from the various departments of your 
Athenaeum will fall with the steadiest lustre; 
that path, so illumined, wiF. be trodden in peace 
and joy, if not in glory; happy if it afford the 
opportunity, as it may to some of you, of 
clearly elucidating some great truth, which, 
being reflected from the polished mirrors of 
thousands of associated minds, sure of the 
opportunity of affording the means of perceiv¬ 
ing and accepting, embracing and diffusing 
many glorious truths, which, when once fairly 
presented, although they may be surveyed in 
different aspects, and tinted with the hues of 
the various minds which receive them, may 




ADDRESS AT THE MANCHESTER ATHENAEUM. 


135 


seem to have “ a difference,” will be found es¬ 
sentially the same to all, and will enrich the 
being of each and all. 

There is one advantage which I may justly 
boast over both my predecessors in this office, 
—that of being privileged to announce to you 
a state of prosperity far more advanced and 
more confirmed than that which either could 
develop. The fairest prophecies which Mr. 
Dickens put forth, in the inspiration of the 
time, in the year 1843, have been amply ful¬ 
filled ;—the eloquent exhortations of Mr. D’ls- 
raeli, in 1844, have been met by noble re¬ 
sponses. From a state of depression, which, 
four or five years ago, had reduced the number 
of members nearly to 400, and steeped the in¬ 
stitution in difficulty, it is now so elevated 
that, as to life members, you number 133 of 
those who have made the best of all possible 
investments, because the returns are sure and 
certain, and the rewards at once palpable and 
fair, which thus greet your life governors upon 
these happy anniversaries; you have of pay¬ 
ing members no fewer than 2500—with an in¬ 
come of £4000 a year—with a debt annihi¬ 
lated, with the exception of that on mortgage, 
and with good hope even that this encum¬ 
brance may be soon swept away, and of in¬ 
forming the Courts of Bankruptcy, which I 
understand have taken shelter beneath your 
roof, that it will soon be time for them to look 
out for a more appropriate home. Before I 
entered this room, I confess I was inclined to 
wonder how these great effects had been 
achieved; I knew they had been principally 
accomplished by the great exertions, the sac¬ 
rifices scarcely less than heroic, of some few 
members of your society, who had taken its 
interest deeply to heart; but now, when I see 
the scene before me, so graced and adorned as 
it is, I certainly need be surprised at no energies 
which have been put forth,—I can wonder at 
no results that have been attained. Those ex¬ 
ertions, however, permit me to remind you, 
having been of extraordinary character, you 
can scarcely hope to be renewed. You must 
look for the welfare of this institution to its 
younger members. To them I speak when I 
say, “To you its destinies are confided; on 
you, if not its existence, yet its progress and 
its glory depend; for its happiest success will 
not arise mainly from emancipated revenues, 
or the admiring sympathy of strangers, or even 
from a scheme remarkably liberal and com¬ 
prehensive, adapted to all, and embracing the 
feelings of all; nor yet in laws admirably 
framed, to preserve and support its proportion 
and order; but it is by the vigorous efforts of 
yourselves—perpetually renewing spirit and 
life in its forms—without which their very 
perfection will be dangerous, because, while 
presenting the fairest shows, they may, with 
less violence of apparent and startling transi¬ 
tion, cease to be realities, and, instead of a 
great arena of intellectual exertion, may 
become only the abode of intellectual enjoy¬ 
ment and luxury—fair, admirable, graceful 
still; but the moving and elevating impulse of 
a vast population no more !—I know I wrong 
you in deprecating such a result as possible; 
a result I only imagine, to remind you that, as 


all momentous changes of the world have been 
produced by individual greatness, so all popu* 
lar and free institutions can only be rendered 
and kept vital by individual energies—a result 
which nothing can even threaten but that most 
insidious form of indolence which is called 
modesty and self-distrust; a result against 
which not only the welfare of this great town, 
and of each stranger who comes to Manchester, 
and who may now hope to find beneath the 
shelter of your roof a great intellectual home, 
but also the exigencies of the time in which 
we live, plead with solemn voices!—They 
remind you that existence has become almost 
a different thing since it began with some of 
us. It then justified its old similitude of a 
journey; it quickened with intellect into a 
march; it is now whirling with science and 
speculation into a flight. Space is contracted 
and shrivelled up like a scroll; time disdains 
its old relations to distance; the intervals 
between the “flighty purpose” and the deed 
through which thought might lazily spread out 
its attenuated films, are almost annihilated; 
and the national mind must either glow with 
generous excitement, or waste in fitful fever. 
How important then is it, that throughout our 
land—but more especially here where all the 
greatest of the material instruments have their 
triumphant home—almost that of the alchemist 
—the spiritual agencies should be quickened 
into kindred activity; that the few minutes of 
leisure and repose which may be left us should, 
by the succession of those “ thoughts which 
wander through eternity,” become hours of 
that true time which is dialled in heaven; that 
to a mind winged for distant scenes, conver¬ 
sant with the society of the great of all ages, 
and warmed by sympathy to embrace the vast 
interests of its species, the few hours in which 
the space between London and Manchester is 
now traversed—nay the little hour in which it 
may soon be flashed over—shall have an in¬ 
tellectual duration equal to the old, legitimate, 
six days’ journey of our fathers; while thought, 
no longer feebly circling in vapid dream, but 
impelled right onward with divine energy, 
shall not only outspeed the realized miracles 
of steam, but the divinest visions of atmo¬ 
spheric prophecy, and still keep “ the start of 
the majestic world.” Mr. Canning once 
boasted of his South American policy, that he 
had “called a new world into existence to 
redress the balance of the old;” be it your 
nobler endeavour to preserve the balance even 
between the world within us and the world 
without us—not vainly seeking to retard the 
life of action, but to make it steady by con¬ 
templation’s immortal freightage. In your 
course,—members of the Manchester Athe¬ 
naeum,—society at large may watch, and I 
believe will mark, the clear indications both 
of its progress and its safety. While the soli¬ 
tary leisure of the clerk, of the shopman, of 
the apprentice, of the overseer, as well as of 
the worker in all departments of labours, from 
the highest to the lowest, shall be gladdened, 
at will, by those companions to whom the 
“serene creators of immortal things,” in verse 
and prose, have given him perpetual intro¬ 
duction, and who will never weary, or betray 




13G 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


Dr forsake him;—while the voluntary toils of 
associated labour and study shall nourish 
among you friendships, not like the slight alli¬ 
ances of idle pleasure, to vanish with the hour 
they gladdened, but to endure through life with 
the products of the industry which fed them ;— 
while in those high casuistries which your 
most ambitious discussions shall engender, the 
ardent reasoner shall recognise here the beat¬ 
ings of the soul against the bars of its clay 
tenement, and gather even from the mortal 
impediments that confound and baffle it, assu¬ 
rance that it is winged to soar into an ampler 
and diviner ether than invests his earthly heri¬ 
tage ;—while the mind and heart of Manchester, 
turning the very alloy and dross of its condi¬ 
tion to noble uses, even as its mechanists 
transmute the coarsest substances to flame and 
speed, shall expand beyond the busy confines 
of its manufactures and commerce to listen to 
the harmonies of the universe;—while, vindi¬ 
cating the power of the soul to be its own 
place, it shall draw within the narrow and 
dingy walls to which duty may confine the 
body, scenes touched with colours more fair 
and lovely than “ever were by sea or land,” or 
trace in each sullen mass of dense and hover¬ 
ing vapour, 

“ A forked mountain, a blue promontory, 

With trees upon’t that nod into the world, 

And mock our eyes with air;” 

while it shall give the last and noblest proof of 
the superiority of spirit over matter by com¬ 
manding, by its own naked force, as by an en¬ 
chanter’s wand, the presence of those shapes 
of beauty and power which have hitherto nur¬ 
tured the imagination in the solitude and still¬ 
ness of their realities ;—while the glory of such 
institutions shall illumine the fiercest rapids of 
commercial life with those consecrating gleams 
which shall disclose in every small mirror of 
smooth water which its tumultuous eddies may 
circle, a steady reflection of some fair and 
peaceful image of earthly loveliness, or some 
glory of cloud or sky, preserving amidst the 
most passionate impulses of earth some traces 
of the serenity of heaven;—then may we exult 
as the chariot of humanity flies onward with 
safety in its speed,—for we shall discover, like 
Ezekiel of old, in prophetic vision, the spirit 
in its wheels! 

There is yet one other aspect in which I 
would contemplate your association before I 
enter on the more delightful part of my duty— 
that in which success is certain—the soliciting 
for you the addresses of distinguished men, 
some of them attached to your welfare as well 
by local ties as by general sympathy, others 
gladly attending on your invitation, who feel 
your cause to be their cause, the cause of their 
generation and of the future. It is that in 
which its influences will be perceived, not 
merely banishing from this one night’s emi¬ 
nence, raised above the level of common life, 
and devoted by knowledge to kindness, all 
sense of political differences, but softening, 
gracing, and ennobling the spirit of party itself 
as long as it must continue active. For 
although party’s out-worn moulds have been 
shivered, and names which have flashed and 


thundered as the watchwords of unnumbered 
struggles for power are now fast waning into 
history, it is too much to hope, perhaps to 
desire, until the education of mankind shall 
more nearly approach its completion, that 
strong differences of opinion and feeling 
should cease to agitate the scenes on which 
freemen are called to discharge political duties. 
But the mind of the staunchest partisan, ex¬ 
panded by the knowledge and embellished by 
the graces which your Athenaeum nurtures, 
will find its own chosen range of political 
associations dignified—the weapons of its war¬ 
fare not blunted, but ornamented and embossed 
—and, instead of cherishing an ignorant at¬ 
tachment to a symbol, a name, or a ribbon, 
expressed in vulgar rage, infuriated by intem¬ 
perance to madness, blindly violating the 
charities of life, and disturbing sometimes its 
holiest domestic affections—it shall grow calm 
in the assertion of principle, disdain the sug¬ 
gestions of expedienc 3 r , even as those of cor¬ 
ruption, and partake of the refinement which 
distance lends, while “ with large discourse 
looking before and after,” he expands his 
prospect to the dim horizon of human hopes, 
and seeks his incentives and examples in the 
tragic pictures of history. A politician thus 
instructed and ennobled, who adopts the course 
which most inclines to the conservation of 
establishments, will not support the objects of 
his devotion with a mere obstinate adherence, 
chiefly because they oppose barriers to the 
aims of his opponents, but will learn to revere 
in them the grandeur of their antiquity, the 
human affections they have sheltered and nur¬ 
tured, the human experiences which mantle 
round them, and the inward spirit which has 
rendered them vital; while he who pants for 
important political changes will no longer 
anticipate, in the removal of those things 
which he honestly regards as obstacles to the 
advancement of his species, a mere dead level 
or a vast expanse redeemed only from vacancy 
by the cold diagrams of theory, but will hail 
the dawning years as thronged by visions of 
peaceful happiness; and, as all great senti¬ 
ments, like all great passions, however oppo 
site may be their superficial aspects, have their 
secret affinities, so may these champions and 
representatives of conflicting parties, at the 
very height of the excitation produced by the 
energy of their struggle, break on a sense of 
kindred, if not of their creeds, at least of their 
memories and their hopes—embrace the past 
and the future in one glorious instant, con¬ 
scious, at once, of those ancient anticipations 
with which the youth of the past was inspired, 
when the point we have attained was faintly 
discerned at the verge of its horizon by the 
intensest vision of its philosophy, and grasp¬ 
ing and embracing the genial idea of the future 
as richest in the ever-accumulating past which 
time prepares for its treasure. Then shall 
they join in hailing, as now we hail from this 
neutral eminence, the gradual awakening of 
individual man of every class, colour, and 
clime, to a full consciousness of the loftiness 
of his origin, the majesty of his duties, the 
glories of his destiny. Then shall they re¬ 
joice with us in the assurance that, as he con* 



137 


LORD ELDON AND LORD STOWELL. 


quers the yet desert regions of the earth which 
was given him to be replenished and subdued, 
the same magic by which you are here ena¬ 
bled to let in on the densest population the air 
and feeling of mountain solitude, will, in turn, 
breathe through the opening wilderness the 
genial refinements of old society; that, as the 
forest yields to his stout heart and sturdy arm, 
the dominion of imagination and fancy will 
extend before him, their powers investing the 
glades he opens with poetic visions, shedding 
the purple light of love through thickets and 
groves till then unthreaded, and touching the 
extremest hills, when first disclosed to the 
human eye, with the old familiar hues of 
Christian hope and joy. Then, in the remotest 


conquests of civilization, shall new Athenaeums 
arise, framed on your model—vocal with your 
language—inspired with your hopes—to echo 
back the congratulations which shall be wafted 
10 them even from this place, on each succeed¬ 
ing anniversary, if not by yourselves, by your 
children and your children’s children, and yet 
more remote descendants, and to bless the 
names of those who, amidst the toils, the cares, 
and the excitements of a season of transition 
and struggle, rescued the golden hours of the 
youth around them from debasing pleasures 
and more debasing sloth, and enabled them to 
set to the world, in a great crisis of its moral 
condition, this glorious example of intellectual 
courage and progress.* 


LORD ELDON AND LORD STOWELL. 

* [Quarterly Review, Dec. 1844.] 


The remarkable success which has attended 
"The publication of Mr. Twiss’s Life of Lord 
Chancellor Eldon is a striking proof of the 
deep and enduring interest which attaches to 
the character it develops. More than six 
years had then elapsed since Lord Eldon’s 
death, and many more since he ceased to dig¬ 
nify the highest seat of British Justice—or to 
influence, except by the weight of reputation 
and age, the discussions and the conflicts of 
the busy world. The principal incidents of his 
life were too well known to leave room for the 
gratification of curiosity—the political scenes 
in which he moved had passed from the arena 
of living things without having reached an 
historical distance—and yet the sale of these 
three massive volumes has exceeded that of 
any similar work within our recollection. 
This success has not, we think, been height¬ 
ened by the courtly revelations and'piquant 
anecdotes with which the work is diversified— 
some of which, indeed, so far impair its effect 
as to suggest the wish we expressed for their 
excision—but has arisen purely from the inte¬ 
rest excited by a vigorous, honest, and affec¬ 
tionate delineation of the character and the 
fortunes of a great Englishman of sturdy na¬ 
ture, by a hand peculiarly fitted for its office. 
This remarkable career, thus depicted and 

•TO SERJEANT TALFOURD, 

On reading his Address to the Manchester At hence um. 

BY EDWARD KENEALY. 

O’er the white urn that held the sacred heart 
Of great Isocrates of old. was placed 
The marble image of a Syren, graced 
W th all the loveliness of Grecian art; 

Emblem of eloquence, whose music sweet 

Won the whole world by its enchanting spells ; 

Oh, with what type shall we our Talfourd greet? 

What Image shall pourtray the spirit that dwells 
Within his soul? An angel from the skies 
Beaming celestial beauty from his eyes— 

The olden Syren sang but to deceive, 

To lure mankind to death her voice was given; 

But thine, dear Talfourd, thy brig At words enweave 
imm ortal truths that guide to God and Heaven. 

18 


thus appreciated, vividly suggests the remem¬ 
brance of a kindred instance of industry, 
worth, and success—less prominently placed 
before the world, because less intimately asso¬ 
ciated with its contests and its changes, but 
not less crowned with emolument and honour, 
and hardly less fertile of instruction—that of 
Lord Eldon’s elder brother, Lord Stowell; and 
if each life is worthy of separate contempla¬ 
tion, both are attended with additional interest 
when considered as springing from one source, 
and fostered in the same nurture. That two 
sons of a reputable tradesman in a provincial 
town at the extremity of England, devoting 
their powers to different branches of the same 
profession, should attain the highest honours 
which could be achieved in the course which 
each had chosen—and that each, after attain¬ 
ing an age far beyond that usually allotted to 
man, should leave, with a magnificent fortune, 
a name indestructibly associated with the de¬ 
partment in which his work was performed— 
is a moral phenomenon not worthy only of 
national pride, but of respectful scrutiny. 
This similarity in the results of the labours 
of these two brothers is rendered more re¬ 
markable by the points of strong difference 
between their intellectual qualities and tastes, 
as developed in their mature years : inviting 
us to inquire what faculties were inherent in 
their youth; how far they were affected by 
early education; how far varied by the cir¬ 
cumstances of their history. » 

The incidents of Lord Stowell’s life, not 
supplying materials for voluminous biogra¬ 
phy, are laboriously collected and admirabW 
detailed in an Essay in the “Law Magazine, 
apparently from the pen which, in a series of 
papers, seemed to have done enough for Lord 
Eldon’s fame, until Mr. Twiss proved how 
much more might be achieved by happier op¬ 
portunity and larger scope. Fortunately, how¬ 
ever, the intellectual triumphs of the elder 
x 2 







138 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS 


Scott were of a nature capable of preserva¬ 
tion : as they will be found recorded entire in 
the Reports of his judicial decisions, of which 
Dr. Haggard's form the most interesting spe¬ 
cimen, as they relate to a class of cases in 
which manners and affections are frequently 
involved, and were corrected by the judge him¬ 
self with sedulous nicety. It is a subject of 
deep regret that his Lectures on History, 
which he delivered at Oxford from the Chair 
of the Camden Professorship, have hitherto 
been withheld from the world. Of these lec¬ 
tures Dr. Parr writes:—“To these discourses, 
which, when delivered before an academical 
audience, captivated the young and interested 
the old—which are argumentative without for¬ 
mality, and brilliant without gaudiness—and 
in which the happiest selection of topics was 
united with the most luminous arrangement 
of matter—it cannot be unsafe for me to pay 
the tribute of my praise, because every hearer 
was an admirer, and every admirer will be a 
witness.” The writer of the article in the 
'‘Law Magazine ” confirms a rumour we have 
elsewhere heard, that “a copy of those lec¬ 
tures, transcribed with all the care and accu¬ 
racy which their noble author was accustomed 
to bestow on his labours, exists in manu¬ 
script and we cordially join in this hope 
“ that no false delicacy will prevent their pub¬ 
lication,”—as we feel assured that they will 
gratify a similar curiosity to that which Gib¬ 
bon expressed, and justify even Dr. Parr’s ar¬ 
chitectural praise. It would be interesting, 
for a different reason, to recover the Essay by 
which the younger Scott, when scarcely twenty- 
one years of age, obtained the prize of English 
Composition at Oxford—“On the Advantages 
and Disadvantages of Foreign Travel,”—a 
subject far removed from his experience, alien 
from hi i studies, and which, therefore, would 
seem tc have owed its success either to the in¬ 
genuity of its suggestions, or the graces of its 
style. As, in after-life, the essayist was never 
distinguished for felicity of expression or fer¬ 
tility of illustration, and acquired a style not 
only destitute of ornament, but unwieldy and 
ponderous, this youthful success suggests the 
question—Whether, in devoting all his powers 
to the study of the law, he crushed the faculty 
of graceful composition with so violent an 
effort, that Nature, in revenge, made his ear 
dull to the music of language, and involved, 
though she did not darken his wisest words 1 
The school-day annals of the brothers dis¬ 
close no trace of difference between them : 
unless the statement of their various recollec¬ 
tions of the Sunday sermon—William gives a 
lucid detail of its substance, and John an ex¬ 
act detail of portions—may be so regarded : 
which may scarcely be, when it is recollected 
that if they were required to perform the ex¬ 
ercise at the same time, there was a difference 
fn their ages of six years. That interval— 
long as a section of school-boy life—implies, 
however, no variety in the system of their 
education: for Mr. Moises, the master of the 
ancient grammar-school of their native town, 
one of the best “ of the old leven,” admitted no 
innovations: the stern requisition—the un- 
gpared rod—the hearty commendation, which 


customary severities made more sweet—had 
the same influence at first as at last: no fa¬ 
vour was shown to the youth of one genera¬ 
tion more than to that of one degree over an¬ 
other; and the results seem to have been 
equally uniform—the insurance of that “holy 
habit of obedience,” which is not only the 
most wholesome, but the happiest state of 
boyhood ; and of a life-long affection to the 
veteran distributor of justice and praise, which 
the modern instructor—who, instead of the 
master, governing by old rules, is the instru¬ 
ment of new theories—can never hope to en¬ 
joy. Each of these celebrated pupils of Mr. 
Moises delighted in the opportunity which 
after-life afforded him of acknowledging his 
obligations to this excellent person ; and each 
testified his gratitude in a manner appropriate 
to his position, and perhaps characteristic of 
his nature: Lord Eldon, by the substantial 
promotion of their schoolmaster, till the good 
old man declined all worldly favours, and then 
by transferring them to his son ; and Lord 
Sfowell, bv contributing to his monument an 
inscription of graceful and just praise, ex¬ 
pressed in Latin, which Dr. Parr might envy. 

Among the lawyers who have emerged 
from that rank which the honest coal-fitter of 
Newcastle adorned, few have enjoyed, like his 
sons, the blessings of an education completed 
at one of our old English Universities. Many 
youths of such parentage, by means equally 
honourable to their own ambition and indus¬ 
try, have worked and cut their way through 
the impediments of fortune to forensic emi¬ 
nence—perhaps acquiring, from the difficulties 
with which they have struggled, nerve and 
courage for the painful controversies in which 
they aspired to mingle—and deriving from the 
varieties of “many-coloured life” with which 
they were personally conversant, “ a learned 
spirit of human dealing,” which they were 
able forcibly and happily to apply to the sud¬ 
den exigencies of their professional career. 
But no such advantages can supply, however 
they may sometimes compensate for, the want 
of that protective influence, extended over 
opening manhood, which, superseding the 
restraints of school by a more generous and 
appropriate discipline, delays the fever and 
turmoil of life for a few of life’s happiest 
years—which presents to yet unworldly ambi¬ 
tion the achievements of praise and fame, be¬ 
fore it is compelled to seek the lower rewards 
of fortune—which, amidst the flutterings of 
expectation and beneath the uncertain gleams 
of fancy, lays the deep and sure foundation of 
principle to be cemented in the mind amidst 
pliant affections—and which blends the vene¬ 
ration for ancient things with the aspirations 
of hope and the quickenings of joy. The 
youth who, quitting school, has been initiated 
at once into the perplexities of the law as 
practised in the most respectable attorney’s 
office, or immersed amidst its more refined 
technicalities in the chambers of an eminent 
pleader, will acquire an earlier aptitude in 
some points of practical routine and pigeon-hoU 
knowledge; but, unless gifted with some rare 
felicity of nature, will be less prepared for the 
systematic acquisition of legal learning, than 





LORD ELDON AND LORD STOWELL. 


139 


he whose mind has been restrained and braced 
amidst academical studies. It is, indeed, of 
the greatest importance that he should look 
abroad upon humanity from a Seat of Learn¬ 
ing, before he enters on a pursuit which will 
be to him either a science or a puzzle, as he is 
prepared to trace its details from its princi¬ 
ples—or compelled to master them for imme¬ 
diate use, and to retain them by the painful 
and harassing process of unrefreshid and 
almost artificial memory. 

Lord Eldon—who, although so much the 
younger of the brothers, was the first impelled 
to enter on the study of the law, by the pres¬ 
sure of need, consequent ©n an early and 
happy marriage—had not forestalled, by any 
direct preparation, the weight of professional 
labour; but he xvas eminently fitted by the 
constitution of his moral nature, and by the 
discipline with which it had been trained, for 
the arduous path he selected. It is delightful 
to contemplate him, in the pages of Mr. Twiss, 
as first settled in his dark and obscure abode 
in London, engaged in gigantic labours—ex¬ 
cited only by the prospect of far-distant suc¬ 
cess, seen through a long avenue of toil, and 
cheered only by the unwearied affection of her 
for whose sake he had relinquished learned 
ease, and who watched through the hours of 
midnight study by his side. As he had been 
fortunate above most youths of his rank in 
life in the achievement of University associ¬ 
ations, so he was favoured in the constancy, 
or perhaps in the inaptitude, which withheld 
him from seeking those aids to his scanty re¬ 
sources which many honourable aspirants to 
professional honours have sought and found 
in literary exertions. Without meaning dis¬ 
paragement to those who have availed them¬ 
selves of such assistance, and, unseduced by 
the premature gratifications of authorship, 
have won the rewards of graver toil, we may 
regard it as a happiness to an incipient law¬ 
yer to be able and willing to hold his course 
without them. It too often happens that the 
immediate gifts of early praise fascinate and 
dazzle the mind so as to indispose it for pa¬ 
tient labour; that the pleasure of imbodying 
the cherished thoughts of boyhood, and recog¬ 
nising the sympathy of many with them, 
prompts to their imperfect development; and 
that the feelings which should spread freshly 
through the whole course of life become 
outworn and faded in the process of ren¬ 
dering them intelligible to the world, and con¬ 
fused to the writer himself by their pale reflec¬ 
tion in the quivering mirror of the public 
mind. No such mental dissipation weakened 
the intellectual frame of either of the brothers. 
Even Lord Stowell, whose occupations and 
tastes, pursued and enjoyed and cherished at 
Oxford, presented the temptation to seek lite¬ 
rary fame, which the success of his lectures 
heightened—even he thought it better to “bide 
his time;” resisted all importunities to seek 
reputation beyond the University he adorned 
and charmed; and preserved undeveloped his 
variety of knowledge and exquisite felicity of 
expression, until they were felt exalting and 
refining the happiest efforts of his advocacy, 
and shedding new lustre on judicial wisdom. 


Lord Eldon, and his great opponent in the 
State Trials of 1794, Lord Erskine, entered on 
the profession which, with far differing powers 
and in various courses, each exalted, under 
personal circumstances strikingly similar— 
each having the favourite qualifications of 
Lord Thurlow—a wife, and no hope of fortune 
but in his own exertions and success. To 
them that profession presented aspects as dis¬ 
similar as their capacities and their disposi¬ 
tions,—on each of which we will glance for a 
moment, before accompanying Lord Eldon to 
his choice, his career, and his reward. 

There is no section of this world’s hopes 
and struggles which is replete with so much 
animation of contest and such frequent recur¬ 
rence of triumphant result, as the practice of 
the Common Law Bar before juries, as it was 
exulted in by Erskine—graced by Scarlett— 
variegated by Brougham—and elucidated by 
Lyndhurst. The grotesque and passionate 
forms of manv-coloured life with which the 
advocate becomes familiar; the truths stranger 
than fiction, of which he is the depositary, 
and which, implicitly believing, he sometimes 
thinks too improbable to offer to the belief of 
others ; the multitude of human affections 
and fortunes of which he becomes, in turn, 
not only the representative, but the sharer, 
passioned for the hour, even as those who 
have the deepest stake in the issue;—render 
his professional life almost like a dazzling 
chimera, a waking dream. For let it not 
be supposed, that because' he is compelled, 
by the laws of retainer, to adopt any cause 
which may be offered to him in the regular 
course of his practice—with some extreme 
exceptions—that, therefore, he is often the 
conscious advocate of wrong. To him are 
presented those aspects of the case which it 
wears to the party who seeks his aid, and who, 
therefore, scarcely appears to him as stripped 
of claim to an honest sympathy. Is the rule 
of law, too, probably against him:—there are 
reasons, which cannot be exhibited to the 
court, but which are the counsel’s “ in pri¬ 
vate,” why, in this instance, to relax or evade 
it will be to attain substantial justice. Does 
the client, on the other hand, require of his 
advocate that he should insist on the “ rigour 
of the game,”—he only desires to succeed by 
a course apparently so odious, because tech¬ 
nicality will, for once, repair some secret in¬ 
jury, and make even the odds of fortune. Is 
he guilty of some high crime,—he has his own 
palliations—his prosecutor seeks his convic¬ 
tion by means which it is virtue to repel,—or 
some great principle will be asserted by his 
acquittal. In all cases of directly opposing 
testimony, the counsel is necessarily predis¬ 
posed to believe the statements which have 
first occupied his mind, and to listen to those 
which would displace his impression with 
incredulity, if not with anger. And how many 
cases arise in which there is no absolute right 
or wrong, truth or falsehood—cases dependent 
on user; on consent; on waiver; on mental 
competency,—and in which the ultimate ques¬ 
tion arises less from disputed facts, than from 
the arguments to be deduced from them;—and 
all these perplexed, distorted, or irradiated by 






140 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


the lights cast on them from the passions and 
the hopes of the client, to be refracted through 
the mind and coloured by the fancy of the 
counsel! In the majority of his causes he 
becomes, therefore, always a zealous, often a 
passionate partisan ; lives in the life of every 
cause (often the most momentous part of his 
client’s life)—“burns with one love, with one 
resentment glows,”—and never ceases to hope, 
to struggle, or to complain,—till the next cause 
is called on, and he is involved in anew world 
of circumstances, passions, and affections. 
Sometimes it will be his province to track the 
subtle windings of fraud, pursuing its dark 
unwearied course beneath the tramplings of 
busy life ; to develop, in lucid array, a little 
history or cluster of histories, tending to one 
great disclosure; to combine fragments of 
scattered truths into a vivid picture; or to 
cast the light from numerous facts on secret 
guilt, and render it almost as palpable to be¬ 
lief as if disclosed to vision. At another time, 
the honour or the life of man may tremble in 
his hands;—he may be the last prop of sink¬ 
ing hope to the guilty or the sole refuge clasped 
by the innocent; or, called on to defend the 
subject against the power of state prosecution, 
may give to the very forms and quibbles with 
which ancient liberty was fenced, a dignity, 
and breathe over them a magic power. Some¬ 
times it will be his privilege to pierce the 
darkness of time, guided by mouldering char¬ 
ters and heroic names; or, tracing out the 
fibres of old relationships, to explore dim 
monuments and forgotten tombs, retracing 
with anxious gaze those paths of common 
life which have been so lightly trodden as to 
retain faint impress of the passenger. One 
day he may touch the heart with sympathy for 
“ the pangs of despised love,” or glow indig¬ 
nantly at the violation of friendship, and ask, 
for wrongs beyond all appreciation, as much 
money as the pleader’s imagination has dared 
to claim as damages ; the next he may implore 
commiseration for human frailty, and preach 
nothing but charity and forgiveness. The 
sentiment of antiquity—the dawnings of hope 
—the sanctity of the human heart in its 
strength and its weaknesses, are among the 
subjects presented in rapid succession to his 
grasp ;—with the opportunity sometimes, in 
moments of excitement, when his audience 
are raised by the solemnity of the occasion 
above the level of their daily thoughts, to give 
hints of beauty and grace which may gleam 
for a moment only, but will never be forgotten 
by his delighted hearers. In this sphere, Ers- 
kine moved triumphant;—lending his pliant 
sensibility to every modification of human 
feeling he touched on—gay, grave, pitying, 
humourous, pathetic, by turns—casting all 
himself into every subject, and forgetting him¬ 
self within it, and shedding on the world of 
Nisi Prius hues of living beauty, which 
seemed to glance and tremble over it. Mr. 
Scott touched on the verge of his sphere in 
his circuits; but though an earnestness which 
all clients admire, a humour not too refined 
for the most vulgar apprehension, and a tem¬ 
per always under control, procured for him 
some business at the Assizes in days when 


competitors were few, he soon found that this 
was not the scene on which he could fulfil 
the prophecies which great judges had pro¬ 
nounced on the outset of his career. 

But there is another branch, or rather asso¬ 
ciated branches of this great profession, re¬ 
quiring powers and habits of thought and 
feeling different, perhaps opposite, to those 
which should endow the advocate who would 
be the charmer of the hearts of juries. To 
study the law as a science; to trace its prin¬ 
ciples upwards to their source in the early yet 
ripe wisdom of our English annals, and thence 
to follow it through the thousand ramifications 
which extending wealth and population have 
rendered needful; and thus to acquire that 
knowledge which may enable its possessor to 
solve with confidence the most intricate ques¬ 
tions, and to present the aspect of each which 
he is retained to sustain, encrusted with learn¬ 
ing, but lucid in outline and clear in result,— 
is an employment laborious and silent indeed, 
Jbut not unhappy in its progress nor doubtful 
in its reward. To succeed in this course, a 
clear and sound understanding, a retentive 
and not fastidious memory, an untiring odus- 
try, either finding or creating a love >f its 
work, are all that is required; but how'rare 
are these qualities, compared to the lower de¬ 
grees of those which are deemed loftier—or 
how rarely do they withstand the temptations 
of pleasure or the more dangerous seductions 
of the listlessness and dreamy inaction which 
are the besetting sins of studious life! The 
student who is brave enough to embrace such 
a course ivith heroic devotion, has objects 
strongly defined before him in the horizon of 
his mind; for him hour is linked to hour, and 
day to day, by the continuous effort to ap¬ 
proach them ; and his life, instead of being 
dissipated among various pursuits, and fretted 
by doubts and vanities, is massed by the co¬ 
herence of its habits into one consistent whole, 
and acquires a dignified harmony. By toiling 
thus in an artificial world, the great lawyer 
not rarely preserves to old qge the simplicity 
and the freshness of childhood,—moving about 
as unconscious of the fever of life as a shep¬ 
herd whose experience is bounded by his na¬ 
tive mountains. 

When Lord Eldon entered on his studies, the 
English law formed a body of old principles 
and modern instances, far better adapted to 
animate and reward such a career than its 
present condition. Although even then greatly 
increased in bulk since the palmy days of its 
first expositors, it was not, as now, perplexed 
by multitudes of statutes, expressed in the bar¬ 
barous jargon peculiar to modern legislation, 
oppressing the understanding and “darkening 
counsel with words without knowledge;” nor 
bound up or frittered away by new rules, 
fashioned more on imagined expediency than 
on principle, and presenting an array of volu¬ 
minous discords which may well strike a 
.student with dismay, and induce him, in des¬ 
pair of acquiring a mastery over the whole, to 
rest contented with such knowledge of indexes, 
“small pricks to their subsequent volumes,” 
as may enable him to find some authority to 
quote, or some expedient to grasp, on the exi 





LORD ELDON AND LORD STOWELL. 


141 


gency of each occasion. The system of law, 
however applicable to the enjoyment, the de¬ 
scent, and the transfer of real property, though 
despoiled of some of its forms of ancient dig¬ 
nity, and debased by limitations of time, which, 
however generally convenient, sometimes pro¬ 
tect the grossest injustice—making kindness 
work a sort of disseisin, and arming ingrati¬ 
tude with power—is even still an extraordinary 
scheme of ingenious architecture, reducing the 
vestiges of feudal barbarism to consistent form, 
and extracting from the usages of violence and 
tyranny the securities of social rights. The 
system of equity too, not a capricious relaxa¬ 
tion of the strict rules of law, but having a 
sisterly entireness of its own, little disturbed 
as yet by the busy hand of tumultuous legis¬ 
lation, retains a kindred if not an equal claim 
for a mind braced for laborious study. To 
the perfect mastery of these systems, with 
the more miscellaneous complexities of com¬ 
mercial law, Lord Eldon on quit tins: Oxford 
devoted his powers, admirably fitted for the 
work by all they included, and scarcely less 
by all they wanted; and the consequence was 
slow, gradual, and complete success in his pro¬ 
fession—secured before he added to his toils 
the anxieties of political life—and calmly and 
steadily grasped as his first object amidst 
them. 

The great element of Lord Eldon’s success, 
both in legal and political life, was the re¬ 
markable simplicity which characterized his 
moral nature, his intellect, his opinions, and 
his purposes. Even his prodigious industry, 
which seemed to rejoice in the accumulation 
of toils on those which would stupify men who 
are accounted laborious, was a subordinate 
power to this singleness of being and aim. 
If he ever cherished tastes which might dazzle 
or distract him in his stubborn career, he soon 
crushed them beneath the weight of his studies. 
Once, indeed, when a young member of the 
House of Commons, he attempted an elaborate 
speech on the third reading of the India Bill, 
garnished with Shakspearian quotations vio¬ 
lently applied, and scraps of Latin and texts 
of Scripture let into the mosaic-work of his 
composition, with strange contrast of colour— 
having resolved, with characteristic boldness, 
to rival Sheridan; but the House listened with 
astonishment to the wilful extravagance of the 
hard-headed lawyer; and he never repeated 
the error. Encouraged by the intellectual suc¬ 
cesses which his industry won in more con¬ 
genial studies, he thought perhaps that he had 
only to apply the same labour to the depart¬ 
ment of wit and eloquence, in order to obtain 
a similar victory—as an eminent special 
pleader whom we had the happiness to know, 
rejoicing in the ease with which he produced 
works of extraordinary practical merit by dis¬ 
tributing the labour of filling up his own mas¬ 
terly outlines among his pupils, once gravely 
proposed to manufacture novels and plays by 
a similar process. After this failure—which 
does not seem to have impaired his character 
with the House for sterling sense and compre¬ 
hensive legal knowledge—he resolutely ab¬ 
stained from all attempts to adorn his natural 
plainness of speaking, or to relieve his toil by 


a single distracting pleasure. Mr. Twiss’s just 
remark—“ that in the station he was eventu¬ 
ally called to fill, his want of imagination was 
one of his advantages; for the judgment, the 
highest of the intellectual powers, and in pub¬ 
lic affairs worth all the rest, was thus left to 
exercise undivided and undisturbed its empire 
in his mind and its influence in the counsels 
of his sovereign,” is equally applicable to the 
early triumphs of his professional career. His 
powers were all massed together, and moved 
by a single impulse, and did not jostle or in¬ 
terfere with each other’s influence. In every 
suit in which he was counsel at the bar, in 
every struggle of political controversy, or in 
the tenor of his private life, he saw his object 
clearly before him ; and toiled upward to real¬ 
ize it with undivided strength by the straight- 
est, though often the most arduous paths— 
some joke, innocent of wit or fancy alone re¬ 
lieving its patient sternness. 

Thus constituted by nature of masculine 
understanding — beyond the common order 
rather in its grasp than in its essence—des¬ 
tined ‘to move altogether when it moved at 
all,’ Lord Eldon was fortunate in a kindred 
simplicity of religious and political creed. The 
effect of his early lessons in the old-fashioned 
school at Newcastle was to implant in a strong 
and simple mind a sense of the reality of reli¬ 
gious truths, as imbodied in the formularies 
of the Church of England, which admitted of 
no more question than if it was the object of 
corporal vision. In his defence, therefore, of 
that which was part of his own being, he felt 
no scruple ; no airy speculations disturbed the 
repose of his settled thought; to protect the 
Church against Romanism on the one side, 
' and Dissent on the other—regardless of the 
expediencies of the times, or deriving new 
strength of opposition from them—became to 
him through life a natural if not an easy office. 
He at least “knew his course.” In like man¬ 
ner, his attachment to the order of things in 
the State, as he found it, was scarcely less 
hearted—with him it was not a matter of 
reasoning, but of fact, so distinctly perceived, 
that he regarded the brilliant defence of the in¬ 
stitutions he loved by the eloquence and wit 
of Canning with uneasiness, as if unquestion¬ 
able truths were lowered in dignity by being 
protected by the dazzling fence of genius. 
When, therefore, his tendency to doubt and 
hesitate in the decision of those complicated 
questions of fact and equity which depended 
for adjudication on his individual view of their 
bearings, is invidiously contrasted with his 
prompt resistance to all extensive innovations, 
it should be recollected that his attachment to 
the institutions of England, as he first knew 
them, was one of the laws of his moral and in¬ 
tellectual nature;—it might be narrow, bigoted, 
inconvenient; incapable of gracefully bending 
to the necessities of the times; but still it was 
part of his true self: an attack on Church and 
State was to him the same thing as a violation 
of his paternal roof or an insult to a domestic 
affection. The same simplicity of nature, wiser 
than the most cunning policy, rendered him a 
greater, or rather a dearer favourite in the 
closet of the Sovereign than many who have 






142 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


striven to maintain an ascendency by the ap¬ 
pliances of servility or the arts of flattery. In 
George III. he found a master with a nature 
congenial to his own; and devoted himself 
with his whole heart to him, in the true spirit 
of Shakspeare’s servant “ of the antique world.” 
The qualities in his Royal Master which, be¬ 
yond his station, attracted and justified this 
strong attachment, have never been so fairly 
developed as in the disclosures made and ve¬ 
rified by Mr. Twiss, who shows the King as 
sustained in maintaining his resistance to re¬ 
volutionary associations and movements, not 
merely by a regal obstinacy and undaunted 
courage, but by a depth of sentiment and earn¬ 
est belief in principles, to which even those 
who have been most disposed to admire the 
resolution and to bless the issue have not al¬ 
ways done justice. His Chancellor’s conduct 
towards him, amidstthose oscillations of reason 
which made him feel the need of a true friend, 
well requited his affection. Lord Eldon, by 
personal interviews with the King, became 
convinced that he was competent to discharge 
the functions of royalty; and, therefore, instead 
of encouraging measures which might induce 
the malady they assumed, he took on himself 
the responsibility of treating him as competent, 
when his own waverihg might have been de¬ 
structive. Surely there is no inconsistency 
between a sudden decision in such a case of 
feeling and conduct, and long hesitation on the 
result of a mass of facts, or of nice legal ana¬ 
logies, determining the earthly fate of a family, 
and affording a precedent for the adminis¬ 
tration of justice in similar cases for future 
times! 

Although Lord Eldon strenuously resisted 
all important changes in the law, he was earn¬ 
estly devoted to its liberal administration, with¬ 
out regard to persons or consequences. “The 
quality” of justice was with him as little 
“strained” as that of mercy. In deciding on 
the charges to be preferred against the parties 
accused of treason for their share in the Eng¬ 
lish combination of 1794 , he manifested a 
nobleness of determination, beyond the sug¬ 
gestions of expediency, as, in the conduct of 
the prosecutions, he maintained a courtesy of 
demeanor which won the respect of his most 
ardent opponents. He believed the offence to 
be treason; and although a conviction for that 
crime was more than doubtful, while a convic¬ 
tion for seditious conspiracy might have been 
regarded as almost certain, he rejected the 
safer and the baser course, and acted on the 
severe judgment of his reason. The analysis 
of these trials by Mr. Twiss—one of the most 
masterly and striking passages of his work— 
while it may leave the prudence of the At¬ 
torney-General open to question, must satisfy 
every impartial mind of the elevation of the 
motive by which he was impelled. While he 
dreaded any relaxation of the criminal law— 
as if all its old “ terrors to evil-doers” would 
vanish in air if its most awful penalty were 
removed from crimes against which it had 
long been threatened—he endured the most 
anxious labour to prevent its falling on an in¬ 
nocent sufferer, or one who, however guilty, was 
not subjected to its infliction by the plainest 


construction of law. Mr. Peel, when Secretary 
for the Home Department, in one of the de¬ 
bates on the imputed delays of the Lord Chan¬ 
cellor’s Court, thus bore testimony to this ex¬ 
emplary caution in sanctioning the infliction 
of capital punishment:— 

“ It had fallen,” he said, “ to his lot to send to 
the Lord Chancellor at the rising of his court, 
to inform him that on the ensuing morning his 
majesty would receive the recorder’s report, 
containing probably forty or fifty cases. On 
proceeding from his Court of Chancery, the 
noble and learned Lord would, as was his uni¬ 
form practice on such occasions, apply him¬ 
self to the reading of every individual case, 
and abstract notes from all of them ; and he 
had known more than one instance in which 
he had commenced this labour in the evening, 
and had been found pursuing it at the rising 
of the next sun. Thus, after having spent 
several hours in the Court of Chancery, he 
often employed twelve or fourteen more in the 
consideration of cases which involved the life 
or death of unhappy culprits.” 

One remarkable instance, in which his 
doubts—more valuable often than the certain¬ 
ties of ordinary minds—stood between a con¬ 
vict and death, notwithstanding the unfavoura¬ 
ble opinion of a majority of the judges, may 
here be selected from a long catalogue. Mr. 
Aslett, after many years’ service as second 
cashier of the Bank of England under Mr. 
Abraham Newland, was tempted to supply the 
deficiency of large speculations in stock by 
misappropriating an immense amount of the 
Exchequer bills which the bank held, and 
which were committed to his care. On detec¬ 
tion, he was indicted for the capital felony of 
embezzling Exchequer bills, the property of 
the Bank of England: but when his fate seemed 
sealed beyond the reach of hope, it was dis¬ 
covered that the auditor, whose signature was 
necessary, by statute, to authenticate Exche¬ 
quer bills, had not been regularly appointed to 
his office; and though an act of Parliament 
was passed to render the documents he had 
signed valid as between the government and 
the holders, that retrospective authentication 
did not justify the description of the embezzled 
papers in the proceedings against the prisoner 
as Excheqver bills. On this objection, Mr. Aslett 
was acquitted, but was detained to meet the 
charge in another form—that of misapplying 
“ effects and securities” of the bank—on which 
he was convicted, and upon which a majority 
of the twelve judges held him amenable to the 
extreme sentence of the law. The Lord Chan¬ 
cellor’s mind, however, was not satisfied that 
these irregular documents could, in a case of 
life, be strictly holden even to justify this more 
general description : Mr. Aslett therefore es¬ 
caped death ; and after suffering many years’ 
imprisonment in the State apartments of New¬ 
gale, with this sentence hanging over him, but 
not unsolaced by social and even festive re¬ 
liefs, was pardoned on condition of quitting his 
country for ever. 

In the comprehensiveness and accuracy of 
his legal knowledge, Lord Eldon was perhaps 
the greatest of all English lawyers—certainly 
exceeded by no one of any age. If it is re- 






LORD ELDON AND LORD STOWELL. 


143 


membered how greatly, even in his time, the 
mass of statutes and decisions had expanded 
from the days of Lord Coke—how the pro¬ 
vinces of common law and equity had assumed 
a systematic distinctness—and how easy of 
application his knowledge was to each of them 
in turn, and also to every branch of Scottish 
law which arose before him on appeal—it will 
be scarcely possible adequately to conceive the 
aptitude for study and the power of continuous 
labour which he must have exercised in the 
few years which elapsed before his time was 
engrossed by an enormous practice, which 
must have rendered systematic study impossi¬ 
ble. After years spent in the Court of Chan¬ 
cery—exclusively engaged in equity, with the 
exception of the superficial varieties of his 
circuits, and the arduous duties of his great 
offices in state prosecutions—he assumed the 
functions of Lord Chief Justice of the Court 
of Common Pleas with as much ease, and 
performed them with as perfect a mastery over 
all subjects, as though his life had been spent 
in the practice of the common law; and in¬ 
deed manifested a promptitude and vigour, 
which he was so often accused of wanting 
when called upon solely and almost finally to 
decide on the fortunes of suitors in the Court 
of Chancery. One passing allusion to his 
having just come from a court of equity, by 
way of apology for quoting a decision in that 
court, is the only circumstance throughout his 
judgments, reported by Bosanquet and Puller 
in the second volume of their reports, which 
could lead to the suspicion that he had ever 
practised on the other side of Westminster 
Hall. In subtlety of apprehension, indeed, he 
is exceeded by Littledale; in ingenious appli¬ 
cation of legal analogies, by Holroyd; in lucid 
purity of expression, by Lord Chief Justice 
Tindal and Lord Lyndhurst; but in extent of 
knowledge and the facility of its application, 
he is exceeded by no judge of whom we have 
either experience or memorial. It is true that 
his style is heavy and involved—that the prin¬ 
ciples of law and the circumstances of fact are 
sometimes blended in his judgments so as to 
appear confused—but the matter is always 
there which not only justifies the particular 
decision, but supplies the rule for time to come. 
So far was he from shrinking from the deve¬ 
lopment of principle, that in the only case 
which, while he was Chief Justice, was sent 
from the Court of Chancery for the opinion of 
the Court of Common Pleas,* he deviated from 
the usual practice of merely certifying the 
opinion of the Court to the Chancellor, and 
delivered a long exposition of the principles 
involved in the question—what words in a de¬ 
vise will pass leaseholds—discussing all the 
numerous authorities, and reconciling them to 
each other and to an intelligible rule. In this 
case, with a noble zeal for the fame of a de¬ 
ceased lawyer, he manifests that vigour of 
mind wffiich was never perplexed except by 
the fear of doing injustice. Referring to some 
reported expressions of Lord Northington, im¬ 
peaching without overruling the old case of 


“ Rose v. Bartlett,” he refused to believe that 
they had been used. 

“We all know,” said he, “ that Lord North¬ 
ington was possessed of great law-learning 
and a very manly mind; and I cannot but 
think that he would rather have denied the 
rule altogether than have set it afloat by treat¬ 
ing it with a degree of scorn, and by intro¬ 
ducing distinctions calculated to disturb the 
judgments of his predecessors and remove the 
landmarks of the law.” 

As Lord Eldon spoke of Lord Northington, 
so would he be spoken of himself. He too 
had a “manly mind”—firm in principle,appre¬ 
hensive and slow in its application—deliberat¬ 
ing sometimes to the injury of individuals, but 
maintaining the majesty of justice by the fear 
of precipitate decision—and (notwithstanding 
the complaints annually made of him in the 
House of Commons because he pondered long 
before he pronounced judgments which would 
decide the destiny of a suitor, and did not 
achieve impossibilities) over-mastering a 
world of labour which almost makes the 
mind dizzy in its contemplation. Nothing, 
indeed, could have enabled him to endure 
such labour but his undoubting faith in the 
great principles of his life—that kindness of 
nature which charms away animosities by its 
unaffected courtesy—and which, amidst the 
distractions of party, and the “fears of change 
perplexing nations,” enabled him to preserve 
an exalted position in the minds of friends 
and opponents— 

'•‘An ever-fixed mark, 

Which look’d on tempests and was never shakpn.” 

With a gentler devotion to legal studies, but 
with accomplishments felicitously harmoniz¬ 
ing with them, Lord Stowell nearly kept pace, 
step by step, with the promotion of his younger 
brother. His residence at Oxford for eighteen 
years—a period of collegiate seclusion unex¬ 
ampled in ihe life of a successful lawyer— 
prepared him to look on the varieties of hu¬ 
man life and character which passed before 
him during the ensuing half century of pro¬ 
fessional labour, through a softening medium. 
Selecting for the scene of his practice the 
cloistered courts in Doctors* Commous, he 
avoided both the dazzling hurry of Nisi Prius 
advocacy, and those tremendous labours of the 
equity student which are scarcely enlivened 
by the arguments of the open Court of Chan¬ 
cery. But although the scene of his exertions 
was quiet and sequestered, his competitors 
few, and the discussions conducted with a sort 
of academical amenity, the subjects which, as 
advocate and as judge, he examined and 
adorned, spread widely throughout society; 
on the one hand, extending through the gravest 
considerations of international law to the ho 
rizon of the civilized world; and on the other, 
affecting those domestic relations in which 
delicate subtleties of passion and temper in¬ 
fluence the most important of human rights 
and duties, and, above all the changes of for¬ 
tune, tend to make life wretched or happy. In 
the dingy recesses of Doctors’ Commons, th 
hopes and fears, the frailties, the passions, the 
loves, the charities of many lives were dis« 


J* Thompson v. Lady Lawley, 2 Bos. and Pul. 303. 








144 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


cerned in ever-shifting variety—as in a camera 
obscura —and never were they refined by such 
elegance as when touched by Lord Stowell. 
Of his efforts during his period of advocacy, 
when his evenings were enjoyed in the bril¬ 
liant society of which Dr. Johnson was the 
centre, the world knows little; but his judg¬ 
ments during the years when he presided over 
the High Court of Admiralty and the Consis¬ 
tory Court, exhibiting all the aspects of each 
case, enable us to guess at the’dexterity w ith 
which he presented the favourable views of 
the causes committed to his charge, and the 
beauty with which he graced them. 

Of Lord Stowell’s decisions the following 
character is given by Mr. Twiss in language 
worthy of the subject:— 

“Lord Stowell had the good fortune to live 
in an age of which the events and circum¬ 
stances were peculiarly qualified to exercise 
and exhibit the high faculties of his mind. 
The greatest maritime questions which had 
ever presented themselves for adjudication— 
questions involving all the most important 
points both in the rights of belligerents and in 
those of neutrals—arose in his time out of 
that great war in which England became the 
sole occupant of the sea, and held at her girdle 
the keys of all the harbours upon the globe. 
Of these questions, most of them of first im¬ 
pression, a large portion could be determined 
only by a long and cautious process of refer¬ 
ence to principle and induction from analogy. 
The genius of Lord Stowell, at once profound 
and expansive, vigorous and acute, impartial 
and decisive, penetrated, marshalled, and mas¬ 
tered all the difficulties of these complex in¬ 
quiries; till, having “sounded all their depths 
and shoals,” he framed and laid down that 
great comprehensive chart of maritime law 
which has become the rule of his successors 
and the admiration of the world. What he 
thus achieved in the wide field of international 
jurisprudence, he accomplished also with equal 
success in the narrower spheres of ecclesias¬ 
tical, matrimonial, and testamentary law. And 
though, where so many higher excellencies 
stand forth, that of style may seem compara¬ 
tively immaterial, it is impossible not to notice 
that scholar-like finish of his judicial composi¬ 
tions, by which they delight the taste of the 
critic, as by their learning and their logic they 
satisfy the understanding of the lawyer.”— 
Life of Lord Eldon , vol. iii. pp. 255-6. 

The perspicuity of Lord Stowell’s judgments 
in the Admiralty Court obtained for them not 
only the respect, but the reluctant accordance 
of the foreign powers who were most inte¬ 
rested in impugning them. Having sent a 
copy of some of them, privately printed, to the 
Admiralty Judge of the United States, he re¬ 
ceived the following remarkable answer:— 

“ In the excitement caused by the hostilities 
raging between our countries, I frequently im¬ 
pugned your judgments, and considered them 
as severe and partial; but, on a calm review 
of your decisions, after a lapse of years, I am 
bound to confess my entire conviction both of 
their accuracy and equity. I have taken care 
that they shall form the basis of the maritime 
law of the United States, and I have no hesita¬ 


tion in saying, that they ought to do so in every 
country of the civilized world.” 

But the more popular judicial essays of 
Lord Stowell—for so his judgments may be 
not improperly regarded—are those pro¬ 
nounced in the Consistory Court in questions 
of divorce, restitution of conjugal rights, and 
nullity of marriage. Partaking more of the 
tone of a mediator than a censor, they are 
models of practical wisdom for domestic use. 
The judgment in the case of Evans v. Evans— 
a suit, by a lady, for divorce by reason of 
cruelty—presents a beautiful example of his 
enunciation of wise and just principles, of his 
skill in extracting from the exaggerations of 
passion and interest the essential truth, and of 
the amenity and grace with which he could 
soften his refusal to comply with a lady’s 
prayer.* Thus he lays down the rule which 
should govern such unfortunate appeals :— 

“ The humanity of the court has been loudly 
and repeatedly invoked. Humanity is the 
second virtue of courts, but undoubtedly the 
first is justice. If it were a question of hu¬ 
manity simply, and of humanity which confined 
its views merely to the happiness of the pre¬ 
sent parties, it would be a question easily de¬ 
cided upon first impressions. Everybody must 
feel a wish to sever those who wish to live 
separate from each other, who cannot live 
together with any degree of harmony, and con¬ 
sequently with any degree of happiness ; but my 
situation does not allow me to indulge the feel¬ 
ings, much less the first feelings of an individual. 
The law has said that married persons shall not 
be legally separated upon the mere disincl ination 
of one or both to cohabit together. The disin¬ 
clination must be founded upon reasons which 
the law approves, and it is my duty to see whe¬ 
ther these reasons exist in the present case. 

“To vindicate the policy of the law is no 
necessary part of the office of a judge ; but, if 
it were, it would not be difficult to show that 
the law, in this respect, has acted with its 
usual wisdom and humanity—with that true 
wisdom and that real humanity that regards 
the general interests of mankind. For though, 
in particular cases, the repugnance of the law 
to dissolve the obligations of matrimonial co¬ 
habitation may operate with great severity 
upon individuals, yet it must be carefully re¬ 
membered that the general happiness of the 
married life is secured by its indissolubility. 
When people understand that they must live 
together, except for a very few reasons known 
to the law, they learn to soften, by mutual ac¬ 
commodation, that yoke which they know they 
cannot shake off.- they become good husbands 
and good wives from the necessity of remain¬ 
ing husbands and wives—for necessity is a 
powerful master in teaching the duties which 
it imposes. If it were once understood that, 
upon mutual disgust, married persons might 
be legally separated, many couples who now 
pass through the world with mutual comfort, 
with attention to their common offspring, and 
to the moral order of civil society, might have 
been at this moment living in a state of mu¬ 
tual unkindness—in a state of estrangement 


*1 Haggard, 35. 





LORD ELDON AND LORD STOWELL. 


145 


from their common offspring—and in a state 
of the most licentious and unreserved immo¬ 
rality. In this case, as in many others, the 
happiness of some individuals must be sacri¬ 
ficed to the greater and more general good.” 

We wish we could follow the famous civi¬ 
lian through all the delicate windings of this 
“ pretty quarrel” between Mr. and Mrs. Evans; 
the masterly analysis of the waiting-woman’s 
motives; the elegant etiquette of the lying-in 
chamber; the prerogatives of the nurse, and 
fantastical distresses of the mistress—and give 
some specimens of Sir William Scott’s gayer 
style. But the embroidery of each case is so 
equally woven, the effect so much depends 
upon harmonj’’ of colour and exact proportion ; 
the sly humour is so nicely, and almost im¬ 
perceptibly, mingled with the worldly wisdom, 
that it would be unjust to tear away fragments 
and exhibit them as specimens. If there is a 
fault it lies in a tendency to attenuation of the 
matter in sentences 

“ With linked sweetness long drawn out 
and yet it would be difficult to find a word we 
would change, or a sentence we would spare. 
Although the refinement of expression is al¬ 
most undisturbed, the sense is always manly— 
nothing affected, sickly, or sentimental—but 
common sense arrayed in the garb of fancy. 
The vivid exhibition of scenes in domestic 
life; the opposition of motives and passions; 
all invested with a certain air from the rank 
in society of the suitors, (for the poor rarely 
indulge in the luxuries of the Consistory 
Court,) reminds us more of the style of 
comedy which was fading from the stage be¬ 
fore Sir William Scott retired from the bench, 
and which his dramatic tastes particularly 
fitted him to appreciate. He must have been 
indignant, even when Garrick performed 
Archer, at the impudent usurpation by the 
hero of the Beau’s Stratagem o'f the civilian’s 
office, when he sets up a rival court of his own 
for the dissolution of unhappy partnerships 
for life, audaciously declares 

“Consent, if mutual, saves the lawyer’s fee 

and consequently destroys the Judge’s func¬ 
tion. In each of his best civic developments, 
the curtain seems lifted on an elegant drama 
of manners: husbands and wivfT'quarrel and 
recriminate in dialogue almost asflgraceful as 
Sheridan’s; youths of fortune become the ap¬ 
propriate prey of rustic lasses, in spite of ob¬ 
durate fathers; and a good moral, belter en¬ 
forced than most stage conclusions, dismisses 
the parties and charms the audience. He 
once said he could furnish a series of stories 
from the annals of Doctors’ Commons which 
should rival the Waverley Novels in interest; 
and we wish he had tried it ! 

In Lord Stowell’s latter days a cause came 
before him which afforded a strong contrast to 
the vivacity of those nuptial and connubial 
contests which had glowed and sparkled and 
loured so often before him; and if dull in the 
progress, grew beautiful in the judgment. It 
involved a question between the churchwar¬ 
dens of the parish of St. Andrew, Ilolborn, 
and the patentee of iron coffins, on the right 
of a parishioner to burial in the crowded 


churchyard at the usual fees, when his last 
earthly mansion was composed of materials 
so durable as to resist for an unusual number 
of years that decomposition which might ena¬ 
ble the narrow space to receive a due succes¬ 
sion of occupiers. This subject, so shocking 
in some of its attendant details, so mortifying 
to human pride in some of its aspects, be¬ 
comes in his hands suggestive of solemn but 
gentle disquisition on the essence of the senti¬ 
ment which requires the reverent disposal of 
the dead, and on the forms through which, in 
various nations and times, it has been breathed. 
From the simplicity of patriarchal days, through 
the splendid varieties of that affected duration 
at which the Egyptian monarchs aimed, down 
to the humble necessities of a pauper funeral 
and brief sojourn of the untitled dead in a 
domicile of their, own, before being associated 
directly with dust, he discourses—“turning all 
to favour,” if not to “prettiness,” and giving a 
vital interest to ashes and the urn. In his re¬ 
searches he delights to measure stately wit 
with that prodigious master in the empire of 
the grave, Sir Thomas Browne; and though 
he falls far short of the embossed grandeur of 
the sepulchral essay on “ Urn-Burial,” which 
stands alone for fantastic solemnity in English 
prose, he diffuses a gentle atmosphere over the 
poor-crowded cemetery, and regulates the cere¬ 
monies and gradations in the world of death 
with the same Grandisonian air with which he 
had adjusted the contests of the fair and inno¬ 
cent and frail among the living. After dis¬ 
cussing the modes of sepulture, and vindicating 
the authority of his court to arrange the differ¬ 
ences, he thus sums up the matter in imme¬ 
diate dispute :— 

“It being assumed that the court is justified 
in holding this opinion upon the fact of a com¬ 
parative duration ; the pretensions of these 
coffins to an admission upon the same pecu¬ 
niary terms as those of wood, must resort to 
the other proposition, which declares that the 
difference of duration ought to produce no dif¬ 
ference in those terms. Accordingly, it has 
been argued that the ground once given to the 
body is appropriated to it for ever —it is li'erully 
m mortmain unalienably —it is not only the do¬ 
nuts ultima, but the domus ce erna of that tenant, 
who is never to be disturbed, be his condition 
what it may—the introduction of another body 
into that lodgment at any lime, however dis¬ 
tant, is an unwarrantable intrusion. If these 
positions be true, it certainly follows that the 
question of comparative duration sinks into 
utter insignificance. 

‘ In support of them, it seems to be assumed 
that the tenant himself is imperishable; for 
surely there can be no inextinguishable title, 
no perpetuity of possession, belonging to a 
subject which itself is perishable—but the 
fact is, that * man,’ and ‘ for ever,’ are terms 
quite incompatible in any state of his exist¬ 
ence, dead or living, in this world. The time 
must come when ‘ ipsce periere mince,' when the 
posthumous remains must mingle with and 
compose a part of that soil in which they have 
been deposited. Precious embalments and 
costly monuments may preserve for a long 
time the remains of those who have filled the 

N 





146 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


more commanding stations of human life— 
but the common lot of mankind furnishes no 
such means of conservation. With reference 
to them, the domu& ceterna is a mere flourish of 
rhetoric; the process of nature will speedily 
resolve them into an intimate mixture with 
their kindred dust; and their dust will help to 
furnish a place of repose for other occupants 
in succession.” 

These seem serious matters of disquisition 
for advanced age; but Lord Stowell, like his 
brother, was too vividly assured of the life be¬ 
yond the grave to contemplate the close of this 
life and the subsequent decay of his mortal 
frame with anxiety; and though his faculties 
almost faded before he sunk into the tomb— 
gently as he had lived, and talked, and judged 
—his serenity of mind was undisturbed, and 
his grace of manner even to the last lingered 
about him. 

In finally contemplating the history of these 


who, while filling at the bar its first offices, and 
during his long possession of the most digni¬ 
fied of all civil positions under the crown, had 
cast upon him the duty of keeping alive the 
social spirit of the bar; encouraging its young 
and timid aspirants ; disarming jealousies, and 
soothing the animosities which its contests 
may engender; and preserving its common 
conscience and feeling of honour, by en¬ 
couraging the association of i's members in 
convivial enjoyments under the highest aus¬ 
pices, But Mr. Twiss gives the true excu.ae—■ 
we can scarcely admit it as a perfect justifica¬ 
tion—for a dereliction of that duty which for¬ 
tune casts on her favourites—in the distaste of 
Lady Eldon for society, and in the habits which 
she acquired when obliged to practise rigid 
self denial,—and asserts, we believe truly, that 
“ bis domestic arrangements, from the time of 
his lady’s death, were such as befitted his great 
fortune and high station.” This was, however, 


two brothers, we are struck with the harmo- too late to repair the opportunities lost during 
nious interest which the picture derives from many years, of not only securing the love but 
their unenvying, unbroken affection, which sustaining the character of the profession, to 
must have doubled to each the pride and sue- which he was devotedly attached in all it£ 
cess of his own life in that of the other. To branches. 

William, John Scott, Lord Eldon, owed that he^jvMf, however, these great lawyers were not 
was not a tradesman in a country town; and ha rod gal of extensive entertainments, they 
year after year, as poverty pressed on him and j loved good cheer themselves, and delighted to 


briefs came slowly, he was indebted to the 
purse of one who felt the full value of money, 
but insisted on investing his own savings in 
his brother’s fortune. Both sharing the same 
undoubting faith in the Established Church of 
their country ; the same dread of innovation; 
thesame recollections of their arduous, painful, 
merry school-days, and of the loveliness of the 
same university—they found in the differences 
of their tastes new grounds of mutual congra¬ 
tulation and pride,—Sir William delighting to 
speak of Sir John’s almost in'credible labours; 
while the attorney-general took credit for the 
civilian’s gentle gayeties, and grew proud while 
listening to his social praise. Both were 
charged with an undue love of pecuniary ac- 


I believe that it was enjoyed by others. No total 
'abstinence, nor half-abstinence, system was 
theirs. Whether the statement be true, which 
the genial biographer of Lord Stowell in the 
1 “ Law Magazine” makes, “That he would often 
! take the refection of the Middle Temple Hall 
{ by way of whet for the eight o’clock banque ,” 
we will not venture to assert; but we well re¬ 
member, more than thirty years ago, the be¬ 
nignant smile which Sir William Scott would 
cast on the students rising in the dim light of 
their glorious hall, as he passed out from the 
j dinner table to his wine in the parliament 
chamber; his faded dress and tattered silk 
gown set off by his innate air of elegance ; and 
his fine pale features beaming with a serene 


cumulation; and, no doubt, they went firmly 1 satisfaction which bumper$might heighten but 
on, almost with equal steps, to the attainment could not disturb. He and Lord Eldon per- 
of great wealth ; but this not so much with an fectly agreed in one great taste—if a, noble 
ignoble desire of mere money, as the steady thirst should be called by so finical a name— 
wish to achieve an end of which the gain was \ an attachment to port wine, strong almost as 


only the symbol, and its amount the proof—part 
of that single aspiration to get the start of their 
fellows in the game of life, which disregarded 
all minor excrements, vanities, and successes, 
and placed ‘ Respire Finem ’ for its rule. The 
bounties of Lord Eldon were unostentatious, 
frequent, and sometimes princely; magnifi- 


that to constitution and crown ; and, indeed, a 
modification of the same sentiment. Sir Wil¬ 
liam Scott may possibly in his lighter moods 
have dallied with the innocence of claret—or, 
in excess of the gallantry for which he was 
famed, have crowned a compliment to a fair 
listener with a glass of champagne—but, in his 


cently conceived and often dexterously hidden ; ’ sedater hours, he stood fast by the port, which 
and although the long possession of the Great was the daily refreshment of Lord Eldon fora 
Seal enabled him to rival the estate which large segment of a century. It is, indeed, the 
Lord Stowell derived literally lrom the fortune proper beverage of a great lawyer—that by the 
of war, there seems no reason to doubt the sin- strength of which Blackstone wrote his Com- 
cerity of the regret with which he left the Court mentaries—and Sir William Grant meditated 
of Common Pleas—the quiet of which suited his judgments—and Lord Eldon repaired the 
his disposition, while its dignified office of ad- ravages of study, and withstood the shocks of 
ministering the law of real property by ancient party and of time. This sustaining, tranquil- 
forms now no more, proposed to him genial lizing power, is the true cement of various la- 
labours and serene decisions. Both, indeed, j hours, and prompter of great thoughts. Cham- 
were chargeable with a want of the splendid pagne, and hock, and claret, may animate the 
hospitality befitting their station ;-—a fault the j glittering superficial course of a Nisi Piim 
more to be regretted in the case of Lord Eldon,! leader—though Erskine used to share his daily 






LORD ELDON AND LORD STOWELL. 


147 


bottle of port with his wife and children, a#d 
complain, as his family increased, of the dimi¬ 
nution of his residue—but port only can har¬ 
monize with the noble simplicity of ancient 
law, or assuage the fervour of a great intellec¬ 
tual triumph. Each of the Scotts, to a very 
late period of his old age, was true to the gene¬ 
rous liquor, and renewed in it the pastimes of 
youth and the crowding memories of life-long 
labour. It is related of Lord Stowell, that, a 
short time before his death, having, in the deep¬ 
ening twilight of his powers, submitted to a 
less genial regimen, on a visit from his brother 
he resumed his glass: and, as he quaffed, the 
light of early days flashed upon his over¬ 
wrought brain—its inner chamber was irra¬ 
diated with its ancient splendour—and he told 
old stories with all that exquisite felicity which 
had once charmed young and old, the care-worn 
and the fair—and talked of old friends and old 
times with more than the happiness of middle 
age. When Lord Eldon visited him in his 
season of decay at his seat near Reading, he 
sometimes slept at Maidenhead on his way; 
and on one occasion, having dined at the inn, 
and learned that the revising barristers were 
staying at the house, he desired his compli¬ 
ments to be presented to them, and requested 
the favour of their company to share his wine. 

He received the young gentlemen—very 
young compared with their host—with the 
kindest courtesy ; talked of his early struggles 
and successes as much for their edifica¬ 
tion as delight—and finished at least his own 
bottle of port before they parted. Surely no 
lighter or airier liquor could befit such festal 
hours of honoured old age, or so well link long 
years together in the memory by its flavours ! 

\ -v 


In closing this imperfect notice of the lives 
of Lord Eldon and Lord Stowell, we venture to 
express a hope that Mr. Twiss’s work, minute¬ 
ly tracing the course of one and reviving the 
remembrance of the other, will fix the attention 
of his own profession on examples which have 
raised, and should help to sustain it. If so, 
the work will be in good season. Great as the 
influence of the profession of the law is in this 
country, many causes have tended of late to 
perplex the objects of its ambition, and to 
tempt its aspirants to lower means of success 
than steady industry and conduct free from 
stain. The number of inferior offices which 
suggest the appliances of patronage, and offer 
low stimuli to its hopes—the increase of num¬ 
bers, whifih weakens the power of moral con¬ 
trol, while it heightens the turmoil of competi¬ 
tion—and a feeling which pervades a certain 
class of members of the House of Commons, 
that any measure which detracts from the re¬ 
sources of the bar tends to the public good— 
have endangered the elevation of its character, 
in the maintenance of which the interests of 
order and justice are deeply involved. We 
can conceive of no more vivid proof of the im¬ 
portance of preserving a body which embraces 
within it alike the younger sons of our nobility 
and the aspirants of the middle classes, and 
offers to all the opportunity of achieving its 
highest and most lasting honours, than that 
which the history of the two sons of the good 
coal-fitter of Newcastle exhibits: nor any happier 
incitement to that industry which is power, 
and to that honour which is better than all 
gain, than the example it presents to those who 
may follow in their steps. 



148 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


# 


SPEECH FOll THE DEFENDANT, 

IN THE PROSECUTION OF THE QUEEN v. MOXON, FOR THE PUBLI¬ 
CATION OF SHELLEY’S WORKS. 

Delivered in tiie Court of Queen’s Bench, June 23, 1841. 


PREFACE. 

In consenting to revise and publish the following Speech, I trust the circumstances attend¬ 
ant on the trial in which it was delivered will be found to justify an exception to the usual 
abstinence of Counsel from interfering with the publication of speeches delivered at the bar. 
The peculiarity of the occasion—the prosecution of an eminent publisher of unblemished 
character at the instance of a person who had been himself convicted of blasphemous libel, 
on a similar charge—and the nature of the question which that prosecution involved, between 
Literature and the Law of Libel—may render the attempt of the defendant’s advocate, to defeat 
the former and to solve the latter, worthy of more consideration than it could command either 
by its power or its success. Observing that the case has been unavoidably deprived, by the 
urgency of political topics and electioneering details, of the notice it would have received 
from the press at a calmer season; and being anxious that the references necessarily made to 
matters of solemn interest and of delicate relation should not be subject to the misconception 
attendant on any imperfect reports, I have thought it right to take on myself the responsibility 
of presenting to the public, as correctly as I can, the substance of that which I addressed to 
the jury. The necessary brevity of the reports of the trial, which has partly induced this 
publication of the speech for the defendant, also renders it proper to give a short account of 
the circumstances which preceded it. 

In the month of April, 1840, an indictment was preferred against Mr. Henry Hetherington, 
a bookseller in the Strand, at the instance of the Attorney-general, for selling certain numbers 
of a work entitled “ Haslam’s Letters to the Clergy of all Denominations,” sold each at the price 
of one penny, and charging them as libels on ihe Old Testament. The cause came on to be 
tried before Lord Denman, in the Court of Queen’s Bench, on 8th December, 1840, when 
the defence was conducted, with great propriety and talent, by the defendant himself, who 
rested it mainly on a claim of unqualified right to publish all matters of opinion, and on the 
argument, that the work charged as blasphemous came fairly within the operation of that prin¬ 
ciple. Mr. Hetherington was, however, convicted, and ultimately received judgment, under 
which he underwent an imprisonment of four months in the Queen’s Bench prison. 

While this prosecution was pending, Mr. Hetherington appears to have adopted the design 
of becoming in his turn the Prosecutor of several booksellers for the sale of the complete edi¬ 
tion of Shelley’s Works, which had been recently issued by Mr. Moxon in a form similar to 
that in which he had published the collected works of the greatest English poets. He accord¬ 
ingly commissioned a person named Holt, then a compositor in his employ, to apply for the 
work at the shops of several persons eminent in the trade, and thus succeeded in obtaining 
copies of Mr. Moxon, of Mr. Fraser, and of Mr. Otley, or rather of the persons in their employ. 
On the sales thus obtained, indictments were preferred at the Central Criminal Court against 
the several vendors, which, with a similar indictment against Mr. Marshall, doubtless pre¬ 
ferred by the same Prosecutor, were removed by certiorari at the instance of the defendants, 
and set down for trial by special juries. Mr. Moxon felt that, as the original publisher of the 
edition, he ought to bear the first attack; and therefore, although some advantage might have 
been gained by placing the case of a mere vendor before his own, he declined to use it, and 
' entered his own cause the first of the series which were to be tried in Middlesex. These 
causes were called on for trial at the sittings after Hilary term; but the prosecutor was not 
prepared with the Attorney-general’s warrant to pray a tales to supply the default of the spe¬ 
cial jury, and as the counsel for the defendant did not think it right to expedite his proceedings 
by doing so themselves, the cause went over, and ultimately came on for trial on Wednesday 
23d June, when nine special jurymen appeared, and the panel was completed by a talcs prayed 
for the prosecution. 

The indictment against Mr. Moxon, which the others exactly resembled, charged that he, 
“being an evil-disposed and wicked person, disregarding the laws and religion of this realm, 
and wickedly and profanely devising and intending to bring the Holy Scriptures and the 
Christian religion into disbelief and contempt, unlawfully and wickedly, did falsely and mali¬ 
ciously publish a scandalous, impious, profane, and malicious libel of and concerning the 
Christian religion, and of and concerning the Holy Scriptures, and of and concerning Almighty 
God,” in which were contained certain passages charged as blasphemous and profane. It then 
set forth a passage in blank verse, beginning, “ They have three words : well tyrants know their use, 



149 


SPEECH IN THE CASE OF THE QUEEN v. MOXON. 


well pay them for the loan, with usury torn from a bleeding world! — God, Hell, and Heaven •” and after 
adding an innuendo, “ meaning thereby that God, Hell , and Heaven, were merely ivords,” proceeded 
to recite a few more lines, applying very coarse and irreverent, but not very intelligible com¬ 
ments to each of those words. It then charged, that the libel contained, in other^parts, two 
other passages, also in verse, and to which the same character may be justly applied.* It 
lastly set forth a passage of prose from the notes, the object of which seems to be to assert, 
that the belief in the plurality of worlds is inconsistent with “ religious systems,” and with 
“deifying the principle of the universe and which, after speaking in very disrespectful terms 
of the statements of Christian history as “ irreconcilable with the knowledge of the stars,” 
concludes with the strange inconsistency pointed out by Lord Denman in his charge, (if the 
author’s intention was to deny the being of God,) “The work of His fingers have borne witness 
against them.” 

The case for the prosecution was opened by Mr. Thomas with a judicious abstinence from 
any remark on the motives or object of the Prosecutor, and without informing the jury who 
the Prosecutor was. He stated several cases, and dicta to establish the general proposition, 
that a work tending to bring religion into contempt and odium is an offence against the com¬ 
mon law, and, among others, that of Mr. Hetherington ; read, besides the indicted passages, 
several others of a similar character, all selected from the poem of “Queen Mab;” eloquently 
eulogized the genius of Shelley, and fairly admitted the respectability of the defendant; and 
concluded by expressing the satisfaction he should feel if the result of this trial should esta¬ 
blish, that no publications on religion should be subject for prosecution in future. He then 
called Thomas Holt, who proved the purchase of the volume for twelve shillings at Mr. Mor¬ 
on’s shop; and who also proved, on cross-examination, that he made the purchase and others 
at the desire of Mr. Hetherington, whom he understood to be the Prosecutor in this and the 
succeeding causes. 


The success of such a prosecution, proceeding from such a quarter, gives rise to very seri¬ 
ous considerations ; for although, in determining sentences, Judges will be able to diminish 
the evil, by a just discrimination between the publication of the complete works of an author 
of established fame, for the use of the studious, and for deposit in libraries, and the dissemi¬ 
nation of cheap irreligion, directed to no object but to unsettle the belief of the reader—the 
power of prosecuting to conviction every one who may sell, or give, or lend any work con¬ 
taining passages to which the indictable character may be applied, is a fearful engine of 
oppression. Should such prosecutions be multiplied, and juries should not feel justified in 
adopting some principle of distinction like that for which I have feebly endeavoured to con¬ 
tend, they must lead to some alteration in the law, or to some restriction of the right to set it 
in action. It will, I think, be matter of regret among many who desire to respect the Law, 
and to see it wisely applied, that the question should have arisen ; but since it has been so 
painfully raised, it is difficult to avoid it; and if the following address should present any 
materials for its elucidation, it will not, although unsuccessful in its immediate object, have 
been delivered entirely in vain. T. N. T. 


Serjeant's Inn , 28 th June , 184L. 


STEECH, 


May it please your Lordship, 

Gentlemen of the Jury, 

It has sometimes been my lot to express, 
and much oftener to feel, a degree of anxiety 
in addressing juries, which has painfully di¬ 
minished the little power whieh I can ever 
command in representing the interests com¬ 
mitted to my charge ; but never has that feel¬ 
ing been so excited, and so justified, by any 
occasion as that on Avhich it is my duty to ad¬ 
dress you. I am called from the Court in which 
I usually practise, to defend from the odious 
charge of blasphemy one with whom I have 
been acquainted for many years—one whom I 
have always believed incapable of wilful of¬ 
fence towards God or towards man—one who 
was introduced to me in early and happy days, 
by the dearest of my friends who are gone be¬ 
fore me—by -Charles Lamb—to whom the wife 

« i t has not been thought necessary to the argument to 
set out these passages; as it proceeds on the admission, 
that, separately considered, they are very offensive both 
to piety and good taste. 


of the defendant was as an adopted daughter; 
and who, dying, committed the interests which 
he left her in the products of his life of kind¬ 
ness to my charge. Would to God that the 
spirit which pervaded his being could decide 
the fate of this strange prosecution—I should 
only have to pronounce his name and to receive 
your verdict. 

Apart from these personal considerations, 
there is something in the^nature of the charge 
itself, however unjustly "applied to the party 
accused, which must depress a Christian advo¬ 
cate addressing a Christian jury. On all other 
cases of accusation, he would implore the 
jurors, sworn to decide between the accuser 
and the defendant, to lay aside every prepos¬ 
session—to forget every rumour—to strip them¬ 
selves of every prejudice—to suppress every 
affection, which could prevent the exercise of 
a free and unclouded judgment; and, having 
made this appeal, or having forborne to make 
it as needless, he would regard the jury-box 
as a sacred spot, raised above all encircling 
n 2 








150 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


influences, to which he might address the 
arguments of justice and mercy with the as¬ 
surance of obtaining a decision only divested 
of the certainty of unerring truth by the im¬ 
perfection of human evidence and of human 
reason. But in this case you cannot grant— 

I cannot ask—the cold impartiality which on 
all other charges may be sought and expected 
from English juries. Sworn on the Gospel to 
try a charge of wickedly and profanely at¬ 
tempting to bring that Gospel, and the holy 
religion which it reveals, into disbelief and 
contempt, you are reminded even by that oath 
—if it were possible you could ever forget— 
of the deep, the solemn, the imperishable in¬ 
terest you have in those sacred things which 
the defendant is charged with assailing. The 
feelings which such a charge awakens are 
not like those political differences which it is 
delightful sometimes to forget or to trample 
on ;—or those local partialities which it is en¬ 
nobling to forsake for a wider sphere of con¬ 
templation—or those hasty opinions which the 
daily press, in its vivid course, has scattered 
over our thoughts, and which we are proud 
sometimes to bring to the test of dispassionate 
reflection ;—or those worldly interests which, 
if they sway the honourable mind at all, in¬ 
cline it to take part against them ;—but the 
emotions which this charge enkindles are in¬ 
tertwined with all that endears the Past and 
peoples the Future—with all that renders this 
life noble by enriching it with the hope of that 
which is to come. If the passages which 
have been read to you—torn asunder from the 
connection in which they stand—regarded with¬ 
out reference to the-time, the object, the mode of 
their publication,—should array you at this mo¬ 
ment almost as plaintiffs, personally wronged 
and insulted, against their publisher, I must 
not complain ; for I shall not be provoked, 
even by the peculiarity of this charge, to de¬ 
fend Mr. Moxon by a suggestion which can 
violate the associations which are intertwined 
with all that is dear to you. He would rather 
submit to the utmost consequences which the 
selfish recklessness of this prosecution could 
entail, if you should sanction, and the court 
hereafter should support, its aim; he would 
rather be severed from the family whom he 
cherishes, and from the society of the good 
and the great in our literature, which he is 
privileged to share ; than he rvould obtain im¬ 
munity by a recourse to those weapons which 
the prosecutor would fain present to his choice. 
Neither will I, notwithstanding the anticipation 
of my learned friend, ask you to palter with 
your consciences, and, because you may doubt 
or deny the policy of the law which is thus 
set in action, invite you to do other than ad¬ 
minister justice according to your oath and 
your duty. I take my stand on Christian 
ground; I base my defence on the recognised 
law; and if I do not show you that the Christian¬ 
ity, which the prosecutor most needlessly pre¬ 
sumes to vindicate, and the law which with un¬ 
hallowed hands he is striving to pervert, justify 
your verdict of acquittal, I am content that 
you should become the instruments of his at¬ 
tempt to retort the penalties of his own sentence 
on one who never wronged him even in thought 


—that you should aid him to render the law 
under -which he has suffered, odious by sanc¬ 
tioning the odious application which he con¬ 
templates; and that at his bidding you should 
scatter through the loftiest and serenest paths 
of literature, distress, and doubt, and dismay, 
awarding him that success which, “ if not vic¬ 
tory, is yet revenge.” 

The charge which Mr. Moxon is called upon 
to answer is, that with a wicked intention to 
bring the Holy Scriptures and the Christian 
religion into contempt, he published the volume 
which is in evidence before you, and which is 
characterized as a libel on that religion, on 
the Scriptures, and on Almighty God. I speak 
advisedly when I say the whole volume is thus in¬ 
dicted; it must be so considered in point of 
justice—it is so charged in point of form. The 
indictment, indeed, sets forth four passages, 
torn violently asunder from their context; yet 
it does not charge them as separate libels, but 
as portions of one “impious, blasphemous, 
profane and malicious libel,” in different parts 
of which the selected parts are found. Now 
these are not all to be found even in one poem, 
for the first three being in poetry, the last is 
taken from a mass of prose appended to the 
first poem of “ Queen Mab,” and intervening 
between it and a poem entitled “ Alastor,” 
which is the next in the series. And if this 
were not the form of the record, can it be 
doubted that, in point of justice, the scope, the 
object, the tendency of the entire publication, 
must be determined before you can decide on 
the guilt or innocence of the party who has 
thus published the passages charged as blas¬ 
phemous 1 Supposing some question of law 
should be raised on the sufficiency of the in¬ 
dictment in which they are inserted, and they 
should be copied necessarily for the elucidation 
of the argument in one of the reports in which 
the decisions of this court are perpetuated; 
would the reporter, the law-bookseller, the 
officer of the court, who should hand the 
volume to a barrister, be guilty of blasphemy! 
Or if they should appear in some correct report, 
partaking of a more popular form, and that re¬ 
port should be indicted as containing them, 
what form would the question of the guilt or-in- 
nocence of the publisher assume ! Would it 
not be, whether he had been honestly anxious 
to lay before the world the history of an un¬ 
exampled attempt to degrade and destroy the 
law, under pretence of asserting it; or whether 
he was studious to disseminate some frag¬ 
ments of strange and fearful audacity, and 
had professed to report an extraordinary trial, 
only as a pretext to cover the popular dissemi¬ 
nation of blasphemy! And would not the 
form, the commentary, the occasion, the price, 
all be material in deciding whether the w»r!i 
were laudable or guilty—whether, as a .vnole, 
it tended to good or to evil! These passages, 
like details and pictures in works of anatomy 
and surgery, are either innocent or criminal, 
according to the accompaniments which sur¬ 
round them, and the class to whom they are 
addressed. If really intended for the eye of 
the scientific student, they are most innocent; 
but if so published as to manifest another in¬ 
tention, they will not be protected from legal 




151 


SPEECH IN THE CASE OF THE QUEEN v. MOXON. 


censure by the flimsy guise of science. By a 
similar test let this publication be judged ! If 
its whole tenor lead you to believe that the 
dissemination of irreligious feelings was its 
object—nay, that such will be its natural con¬ 
sequence—let Mr. Hetherington have his tri¬ 
umph ; but if you believe that these words, 
however offensive when abstractedly taken, 
form part of a great intellectual and moral phe¬ 
nomenon, which may be disclosed to the class 
of readers who alone will purchase the volume, 
not only without injury, but to their instruc¬ 
tion, you will joyfully find Mr. Moxon as free 
from blasphemy in contemplation of the strict¬ 
est law, as I know he is in purpose and in spirit. 

The passages selected as specimens of the 
indicted libel are found in a complete edition 
of the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley—a work 
comprising more than twenty thousand lines 
of verse, and occupy something less than the 
three-hundredth part of the volume which con¬ 
tains them. The book presents the entire in¬ 
tellectual history—true and faithful, because 
traced in the series of those works which were 
its events—of one of the most extraordinary 
persons ever gifted and doomed to illustrate 
the nobleness, the grandeur, the imperfections, 
and the progress of human genius—whom it 
pleased God to take from this world while the 
process harmonizing his stupendous powers 
was yet incomplete,but not before ithad indicat¬ 
ed its beneficent workings. It is edited by his 
widow, a lady endowed with great and original 
talent, who, as she states in her preface, hast¬ 
ens “ to fulfil an important duty, that of giving 
the productions of a sublime genius to the 
world, with all the correctness possible, and of, 
at the same time, detailing the history of these 
productions as they sprang, warm and living, 
from his heart and brain.” And, accordingly, 
the poems are all connected together by state¬ 
ments as to the circumstances under which 
they were written, and the feelings which in¬ 
spired them. The “alterations (says Mrs. 
Shelley) his opinions underwent ought to be 
recorded, for they form his history.” 

The first of these works is a poem, written 
at the age of eighteen, entitled “Queen Mab;” 
a composition marked with nothing to attract 
the casual reader—irregular in versification, 
wild, disjointed, visionary; often difficult to be 
understood even by a painful student of poetry, 
and sometimes wholly unintelligible even to 
him ; but containing as much to wonder at, to 
ponder on, to weep over, as any half-formed 
work of genius which ever emanated from 
the vigour and the rashness of youth. This 
poem, which I shall bring before you presently, 
is followed by the marvellous series of works 
of which “ Alastor,” “The Revolt of Islam,” 
the “Prometheus Unbound,” and “ The Cenci” 
form the principal, exhibiting a continuous 
triumph of mellowing and consecrating influ¬ 
ences, down to the moment when sudden 
death shrouded the poet’s career from the ob¬ 
servation of mortals. Now the question is, 
whether it is blasphemy to present to the 

WO rld_say rather to the calm, the laborious, 

the patient searcher after wisdom and beauty, 
who alone will peruse this volume—the awful 
mistakes, the mighty struggles, the strange de¬ 


pressions, and the imperfect victories of such 
a spirit, because the picture has some pas¬ 
sages of frightful gloom. I am far from con¬ 
tending that every thing which genius has in 
rashness or in wantonness produced, becomes, 
when once committed to the press, the inalien¬ 
able property of mankind. Such a principle, 
indeed, seems to be involved in an argument 
which was recently sanctioned by the autho¬ 
rity of a Cabinet Minister more distinguished 
even as a profound thinker and an eloquent 
and accomplished critic, than by political 
station. When I last urged the claim of the 
descendants of men of genius to be the guar¬ 
dians of their fame, as well as the recipients 
of its attendant rewards, I was met with denial 
on the plea that, from some fastidiousness of 
taste, or some over-niceness of moral appre¬ 
hension, the hereditary representatives of a 
great writer may cover his works with artifi¬ 
cial oblivion. I have asked, whether, if a poet 
has written “ some line which, dying, he may 
wish to blot,” he shall not be allowed by the 
insatiate public to blot it dying; and I have 
asked in vain! Fielding and Richardson have 
been quoted, as writers whose works, multi¬ 
plying as they will through all time the sources 
of innocent enjoyment, might have been sup¬ 
pressed by some too dainty moralist. Now, 
admitting that the tendency of Fielding's 
works, taken as a whole, is as invigorating as 
it is delightful, I fear there are chapters which, 
if taken from their connection—apart from the 
healthful atmosphere in which their impurities 
evaporate and die—and printed at some penny 
cost for dissemination among the young, would 
justly incur the censure of that law which has 
too long withheld its visitations from those 
who have sought a detestable profit by spread¬ 
ing cheap corruption through the land. It 
may be true, as Dr. Johnson ruled, that Rich¬ 
ardson “had taught the passions to move at 
the command of virtue;” and, as was recently 
asserted, that Mrs. Hannah More “first learned 
from his writings those principles of piety by 
which her life was guided;” but (to leave out 
of consideration the Adventures of Pamela, 
which must sometimes have put Mrs. Hannah 
More to the blush) I fear that selections might 
be made, even from the greatest of all prose 
romances, Clarissa Harlowe, which the Society 
for the Suppression of Vice would scarcely 
endure. Do I wish them therefore suppressed ? 
No! Because in these massive volumes the 
antidote is found with the bane; because the 
effect of Lovelace’s daring pleas for vice, and 
of pictures yet more vicious, is neutralized by 
the scenes of passion and suffering which 
surround them; because the unsullied image 
of heroic purity and beautiful endurance rises 
fairer from amidst the encircling pollutions, 
and conquers every feeling but those of admi¬ 
ration and pit)\ Yet if detached scenes were, 
like these passages of Shelley, selected for the 
prosecution, how could they be defended—but, 
like them, by reference to the spirit, and in¬ 
tent, and tendency of the entire work from 
which they were torn 1 And yet the defence 
would be less conclusive than that which I 
now offer; as descriptions which appeal to 
passion are far less capable of correction bv 






152 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


accompanying moralities, than the cold specu¬ 
lations of a wild infidelity by the considera¬ 
tions which the history of their author’s mind 
supplies. In the wise and just dispensations 
of Providence great powers are often found 
associated with weakness or with sorrow ; but 
when these are not blended with the intellec¬ 
tual greatness they countervail, but merely 
affect the personal fortunes of their possessors 
—as when a sanguine temperament leads into 
vicious excesses—there is no more propriety 
in unveiling the truth, because it is truth, than 
in exhibiting the details of some physical 
disease. But when the greatness of the poet's 
intellect contains within itself the elements of 
tumult and disorder—when the appreciation 
of the genius, in all its divine relations and 
all its human lapses, depends on a view of the 
entire picture, must it be withheld! It is not 
a sinful Elysium, full of lascivious blandish¬ 
ments, but a heaving chaos of mighty elements, 
that the publisher of the early productions of 
Shelley unveils. In such a case, the more 
awful the alienation, the more pregnant with 
good will be the lesson. Shall this life, 
fevered with beauty, restless with inspiration, 
be hidden: or, wanting its first blind but 
gigantic efforts, be falsely, because partially, 
revealed ! If to trace back the stream of 
genius, from its greatest and most lucid earthly 
breadth to its remotest fountain, is one of the 
most interesting and instructive objects of phi¬ 
losophic research, shall we—when we have 
followed that of Shelley through its majestic 
windings, beneath the solemn glooms of “The 
Cenci,” through the glory-tinged expanses of 
“The Revolt of Islam,” amidst the dream-like 
haziness of the “ Prometheus”—be forbidden 
to ascend with painful steps its narrowing 
course to its furthest spring, because black 
rocks may encircle the spot whence it rushes 
into day, and demon shapes—frightful but 
powerless for harm—may gleam and frown on 
us beside it! 

Having thus endeavoured to present to you 
the foundation of my defence—that the volume 
in which these passages appear is in its sub¬ 
stance historical, and that, so far from being 
adopted by the compiler, they are presented as 
necessary to historical truth—I will consider 
the passages themselves, and the poem in 
which they appear, with a view to inquire 
whether they are of a nature capable of being 
fairly regarded as innoxious in their connection 
with Shelley’s life. Admitting, as I do, that if 
published with an aim to commend them to 
the reader as the breathings or suggestions of 
truth—nay, that if recklessly published in 
such a manner as to present them to the reader 
for approval, they deserve all the indignation 
which can be lavished, on them; I cannot 
think, even then, they would have power to 
injure. They appeal to no passion—they per¬ 
vert no affection—they find nothing in human 
nature, frail as it always is, guilty as it some¬ 
times becomes—to work on. Contemplated 
apart from the intellectual history of the ex¬ 
traordinary being who produced them, and 
from which they can never be severed by any 
reader of this book, they would excite no feel¬ 
ings but those of wonder at their audacity, and 


pity for their weakness. Not only are they 
incapable of awakening any chords of evil in 
the soul, but they are ineffectual even to pre¬ 
sent to it an intelligible heresy. “We under¬ 
stand a fury in the words—but not the words.” 
What do they import! Is it atheism!—oris 
it mad defiance of a God by one who believes 
and hates, yet does not tremble ! To the first 
passage, commencing, “ They have three words ” 
— “God, Hell, and Heaven /”—the prosecutor 
does not venture to affix any meaning at all, 
but tears them from their context, and alleges 
that they are part of a libel on the Holy Scrip¬ 
tures, though there is no reference in them to 
the Bible, or to any Scripture doctrine; nor 
does the indictment supply any definite mean¬ 
ing or reference to explain or to answer. To 
the second paragraph— 

Is there a Gr»d t—av, an Almighty God, 

And vengeful as almighty ! Once his voice 
Was heard on earth : earth shudder’d at the sound ; 
The fiery-visaged firmament express’d 
Abhorrence, and the grave of nature yawn’d 
To swallow all the dauntless and the good 
That dared to hurl defiance at his throne, 

Girt as it was with power— 

the indictment does present a most extended 
innuendo; “ Thereby meaning and referring to the 
Scripture history of Korah , Hath an, and Abiram ; 
and meaning that the said Korah, Daihan, and 
Abiram, were dauntless and good, and were so 
dauntless and good for daring to hurl defiance at 
the throne of Almighty God.” This is, indeed, a 
flight of the poetry of pleading—a construction 
which you must find as the undoubted sense 
of the passage—before you can sustain this 
part of the accusation. But again, I ask, is 
there any determinate meaning in these “ wild 
and whirling words!” Are they more than 
atoms of chaotic thought not yet subsided into 
harmony—over which the Spirit of Love has 
not yet brooded, so as to make them pregnant 
with life, and beauty, and joy! But suppose, 
for a moment, they nakedly assert atheism— 
never was there an error which, thus inci¬ 
dentally exhibited, had less power to charm. 
How far it is possible that such a miserable 
dogma, dexterously insinuated into a perplexed 
understanding or a corrupted heart, may find 
reception, I will not venture to speculate, but 
I venture to affirm that thus nakedly presented, 
as the dream of a wild fancy, it can at most 
only glare for a moment, a bloodless phantom, 
and pass into kindred nothing! Or do the 
words rather import a belief in a God—the 
ruling Power of the universe—yet an insane 
hatred of his attributes ! Is it possible to con¬ 
template the creature of a day standing up 
amidst countless ages—like a shadowy film 
among the confused grandeur of the universe 
—thus propelled, with any other feeling than 
those of wonder and pity! Or do these words 
merely import that the name and attributes of 
the Supreme Being have been abused and per¬ 
verted by “ the oppressors of mankind,” for 
their own purposes, to the misery of the op¬ 
pressed ! Or do they vibrate and oscillate 
between all these meanings, so as to leave the 
mind in a state of perplexity, balancing and 
destroying each other! In either case, they 
are powerless for evil. Unlike that seductive 





153 


SPEECH IN THE CASE OF THE QUEEN v. MOXON. 


infidelity which flatters the pride of the under¬ 
standing, by glittering sophistry—or that still 
more dangerous infidelity, which gratifies its 
love of power by bitter sarcasm—or that most 
dangerous of all which perverts the sensibili¬ 
ties, and corrupts the affections—it resembles 
that evil of which Milton speaks, when, with a 
boldness which the fastidious might deem pro¬ 
fane, he exclaims, 

Evil into the mind of God or man 

May come and go, so unapproved, and leave 

No spot or blame behind. 

If, regarded in themselves, these passages 
were endowed with any power of mischief, the 
manner in which they are introduced in the 
poem—or rather phantasm of a poem—of 
‘•Queen Mab” must surely neutralize them. 
It has no human interest—no local affinities— 
no machinery familiar even to thought. It 
opens in a lyrical measure, wanting even the 
accomplishment of rhyme, with an apostrophe 
uttered, no one knows by whom or where, on 
a sleeping nymph—whether human or divine 
—the creature of what mythology—on earth 
or in some other sphere—is unexplained; all 
we know is, that the lady or spirit is called 
Tanthe. Thus it begins :— 

How wonderful is Death— 

Death and his brother Sleep! 

One, pale as yonder waning moon, 

With lips of lurid blue ; 

The other, rosy as the morn 
When, throned in Ocean’s wave, 

It blushes o’er the world; 

Yet both so passing wonderful ! 

Hath then the gloomy power 
Whose reign is in the tainted sepulchres 
Seized on her sinless soul! 

Must then that peerless form. 

Which love and admiration cannot view 
Without a beating heart—those azure veins 
Which steal like streams along a field of snow— 
That lovely outline which is fair 
As breathing marble, perish ! 

Must putrefaction’s breath 
Leave nothing of this heavenly sight 
But loathsomeness and ruin ! 

Spare nothing but a gloomy theme, 

On which the lightest heart might moralize! 

Or is it only a sweet slumber 
Stealing o’er sensation, 

Which the breath of roseate morning 
Chasetli into darkness ! 

Will Ianthe wake again, 

And give that faithful bosom joy, 

Whose sleepless spirit waits to catch 
Light, life, and rapture from her smile ! 

The answer to the last question is, that 
Ianthe will awake,—which is expressed in 
terms appropriately elaborate and mystical. 
But while she is thus sleeping, the Fairy Mab 
descends—invites the soul of the nymph to quit 
her form—and conveys it through systems, 
suns, and worlds to the temple of “The Spirit 
of Nature,” where the Fairy and the Soul enter 
“The Hall of Spells,” and a kind of phantas¬ 
magoria passes before them, in which are 
dimly seen representations of the miseries, op¬ 
pressions, and hopes of mankind. Few, indeed, 
are the readers who will ever enter the dreary 
portals of that fane, or gaze on the wild inter¬ 
mixture of half-formed visions and theories 
which gleam through the hazy prospects seen 


from its battlements. The discourse of the 
Fairy—to the few who have followed that dizzy 
career—is an extraordinary mixture of wild 
rhapsody on the miseries attendant on human¬ 
ity, and the supposed errors of its faith, and of 
fancies “ of the moonshine’s watery beams.” 
After the “obstinate questioning” respecting 
the existence of a God, this Fairy—who is 
supposed to deny all supernatural existence— 
calls forth a shape of one whose imaginary 
being is entirely derived from Christian tradi¬ 
tion—Ahasuerus, the Jew—who is said to have 
scoffed at our Saviour as he bore his cross to 
Calvary, and to have been doomed by Him to 
wander on the earth until His second coming. 
Of this phantom the question is asked, “7a 
there a God?” and to him are the words ascribed 
in answer which form the second and third 
portions of the Prosecutor’s charge. Can any 
thing be conceived more inconsistent—more 
completely self-refuted—and therefore more 
harmless] The whole machinery, indeed, 
answers to the description of the Fairy,— 

The matter of which dreams are made, 

Not more endow’d with actual life, 

Than this phantasmal portraiture 
Of wandering human thought. 

All, indeed, is fantastical—nothing clear ex¬ 
cept that atheism, and the materialism on 
which alone atheism can rest, are refuted in 
every page. If the being of God is in terms 
denied—which I deny—it is confessed in sub¬ 
stance; and what injury can an author do, 
who one moment deprecates the “deifying the 
Spirit of the universe,” and the next himself 
deifies “the spirit of nature,”—speaks of her 
“eternal breath,” and fashions for her “a fit¬ 
ting temple 1” Nay, in this strange poem, the 
spiritual immunities of the soul and its im¬ 
mortal destinies are distinctly asserted amidst 
all its visionary" splendours. The Spirit of 
Ianthe is supposed to arise from the slumber¬ 
ing body, and to stand beside it; while the poet 
thus represents each :— 

’Twas a sight 

Of wonder to behold the body and soul. 

The self-same lineaments, the same 
Marks of identity were there, 

Yet, Oh how different! One aspires to heaven, 
Pants for its sempiternal heritage. 

And ever changing, ever rising, still 
Wantons in endless being ; 

The other for a time the unwilling sport 
Of circumstance and passion, struggles on, 

Fleets through its sad duration rapidly; 

Then, like a useless and worn-out machine, 

Rots, perishes, and passes. 

Now, when it is found that this poem, thus 
containing the doctrine of immortality, is pre¬ 
sented with the distinct statement that Shelley 
himself in maturer life departed from its offen¬ 
sive dogmas—when it is accompanied by his 
own letter in which he expresses his wish fo # r 
its suppression—when, therefore, it is not given 
even as containing his deliberate assertions, 
but only as a feature in the development of his 
intellectual character—surely all sting is taken 
out of the rash and uncertain passages which 
have been selected as indicating blasphemy! 
But is it not antidote enough to the poison of a 
pretended atheism, that the poet who is supposed 
to-day to deny Deity, finds Deity in all things! 









154 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


I cannot proceed with this defence without 
feeling that I move tremulously among sacred 
things which should be approached only in 
serene contemplation ; that I am compelled to 
solicit your attention to considerations more 
fit to be weighed in the stillness of thought 
than amidst the excitements of a public trial; 
and that I am able only to suggest reasonings 
which, if woven into a chain, no strength of 
mine could utter, nor your kindest patience 
follow. But the fault is not mine. I cannot 
otherwise even hint the truth—the living truth 
—of this case to your minds as it fills and 
struggles in my own, or protect my client and 
friend from a prosecution without parallel in 
our legal history. If the prosecutor, in return 
for his own conviction of publishing some 
cheap and popular work of alleged blasphemy 
—prepared, calculated, and intended by the 
author to shake the religious principles of the 
uneducated and the young,—has attempted to 
assail the efforts of genius, and to bring into 
question the relations, the uses, the tendencies 
of the divinest faculties, I must not shrink 
from entreating you to consider those bearings 
of the question-which are essential to its jus¬ 
tice. And if you feel unable fully to examine 
them within the limits of a trial, and in the 
atmosphere of a court of justice, yet if you 
feel with me that they are necessary to a just 
decision, you cannot doubt what your duty to 
the defendant and to justice is, on a criminal 
charge ! Pardon me, therefore, if I now seek 
to show you, by a great example, how unjustly 
you would deal with so vast and so divine a 
thing as the imagination of a poet, if you were 
to take his isolated passages which may seem 
to deal too boldly' with saqred things, and— 
without regard to the process of the faculty by 
which they are educed—to brand them as the 
effusions of a blasphemous mind, or as tend¬ 
ing to evil issues. That example will also 
show you how a poet—devoting the noblest 
powers to the loftiest themes—when he ven¬ 
tures to grapple with the spiritual existences 
revealed by the Christian faith, in the very 
purpose of vindicating “ the ways of God to 
men,” may seem to incur a charge like the 
present, and with as much justice, and may 
be absolved from it only by nice regard to the 
tendencies of the divine faculty he exerts. I 
speak not of a “marvellous boy,” as Shelley 
was at eighteen, but of Milton, in the maturity 
of his powers, when he brought all the “spoils 
of time,” and the clustered beauty hoarded 
through a long life, to the deliberate construc¬ 
tion of a work which should never die. His 
case is the converse of that of Shelley—-he be¬ 
gins from an opposite point; he falls into an 
opposite error; but he expatiates in language 
and imagery out of which Mr. Hetherington 
might shape a charge as spacious as that 
which he has given you to decide. Shelley 
fancies himself irreligious, and everywhere 
falters or trembles into piety; Milton, believ¬ 
ing himself engaged in a most pious work, is 
led by the tendencies of his imagination to 
individualize—to adorn—to enthrone—the En¬ 
emy of God ; and to invest his struggles against 
Omnipotence with all the nobleness of a pa¬ 
triotic resistance to tyranny, and his suffering 


from Almighty justice with the graces of for¬ 
titude. Let it not be urged that the language 
which his Satan utters is merely to be regarded 
with reference to dramatic proprieties—it is 
attributed to the being in whom the interest of 
his poem centres ; and on whom admiration 
and sympathy attend as on a sufferer in the 
eternal struggle of right against power. Omni¬ 
potence becomes tyranny in the poet’s vision, 
and resistance to its requisitions appears the 
more generous even because hopelessly vain. 
Before I advert to that language, and ask you 
to compare it with the expressions selected for 
prosecution, let me call to your recollection 
the grandeurs—nay, the luxuries of thought 
wdth which the “Lost Archangel” is sur¬ 
rounded ;—the magic by which even out of 
the materials of torture dusky magnificence is 
created in his place of exile, beyond “ the 
wealth of Ormus and of Ind;” and the faded 
glory and unconquerable spirit attributed to 
those rebel legions who still sustain him in 
opposition to the Most High. Observe the 
hosts, still angelic, as they march at his bid¬ 
ding !— 

Anon they move 

In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood 
Of flutes and soft recorders; such as raised 
To height of noblest temper heroes old 
Arming to battle ; and, instead of rage, 

Deliberate valour breathed, firm and unmoved 
With dread of death, to flight or foul retreat; 

Nor wanting power to mitigate and ’suage 
With solemn touches troubled thoughts, and chase 
Anguish, and doubt, and fear, and sorrow, and pain, 
From mortal or immortal minds. 

Whether we listen to those who— 

More mild, 

Retreated in a silent valley, sing, 

With notes angelical, to many a harp 
Their own heroic deeds and hapless fall 
By doom of battle— 

or those with whom the moral philosopher 
sympathizes yet more—who 

Sat on a hill retired 

In thoughts more elevate, and reason’d high 
Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate, 

Fix’d fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute— 

or expatiate over the muster-roll of their chiefs, 
in which all the splendours of the East, the 
gigantic mysteries of Egypt, and the chastest 
forms of Grecian beauty gleam on us—all re¬ 
flect back the greatness of Him who surveys 
them with “ tears such as angels weep.” His 
very armour and accoutrements glisten on us 
with a thousand beauties ! 

Ilis ponderous shield, 

Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, 

Behind him cast; the broad circumference 
Hung on his shoulders like the moon- 

And not only like the moon as seen to the up¬ 
turned gaze of ordinary men, but as associated 
with Italian art, and discerned from places 
whose names are music— 

-- I.ike the moon whose orb 

Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views 
At evening, from the top of Fesold, 

Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, 

Rivers, or mountains in her spotty globe. 

“His spear” is not only likened to a pine 
hewn in the depth of mountain forests, but, a* 





SPEECH IN THE CASE OF THE QUEEN v. MOXON. 


155 


if the sublimest references to nature were in¬ 
sufficient to accumulate glories for the bearer, 
is consecrated by allusions to the thousand 
storms and thousand thunders which the mast 
of an imperial ship withstands. 

Ilis spear (to equal which the talle.-t pine 
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast 
Of some great admiral, were but a wand) 

He walk’d with, to support uneasy steps 
Over the burning marie ; not like those steps 
On Heaven's azure. 

Now, having seen how the great Christian 
Poet has lavished all the glories of his art on 
the attendant hosts and personal investiture 
of the brave opponent of Almighty Power, let 
us attend to the language in which he ad¬ 
dresses his comrade in enterprise and suffer¬ 
ing. 

Into what pit thou seest, 

From what height fallen— so much the stronger proved 
He icith his thunder: and till then who knew 
The force of those dire arms ? Yet not for those, 
j\Tor what the potent Victor in his rage 
Can else inflict, do I repent or change , 

Though changed in outward lustre, that fix’d mind, 
And high disdain, from sense of injured merit, 

That with the Mightiest raised me to contend. 

And to the fierce contention brought along 
Innumerable force of spirits arm’d, 

That durst dislike His reign, and , me preferring, 

His utmost power with adverse power opposed 
In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven, 

And shook His throne ! 

Such is the force of the poet’s enthusiastic 
sympathy with the speaker, that the reader al¬ 
most thinks Omnipotence doubtful; or, if that 
is impossible, admires the more the courage 
that can resist it! The chief proceeds— 

What though the field be lost 1 
All is not lost; the unconquerable will, 

And study of revenge, immortal hate, 

And courage never to submit or yield, 

And what is else not to be overcome ; 

That glory never shall his wrath or might 
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace 
With suppliant knee, and deify His power, 

Who from the terror of this arm so late 
Doubted his empire ; that were low indeed, 

That were an ignominy, and shame beneath 
This downfall 1 

This mighty representation of generous re¬ 
sistance, of mind superior to fortune, of re¬ 
solution nobler than the conquest, ooncludes 
by proclaiming “eternal war” against Him— 

Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy, 

Sole reigning, holds the tyranny of heaven. 

Surely, but for the exquisite grace of the 
language compared with the baldness of Shel¬ 
ley’s,! might parallel from this speech all that 
the indictment charges about “an Almighty 
Fiend” and “ Tyrannous Omnipotence.” Listen 
again to the more composed determination 
and sedate self-reliance of the archangelic 
sufferer! 

“ Is this the region 1 this the soil, the clime I” 

Said then the lost archangel, “this the seat 

That we must change for heaven 1 this mournful gloom 

For that celestial light 1 Be it so, since he, 

Who now is Sovran, can dispose and bid 
What shall be right; farthest from him is best. 

Whom reason hath equall'd, force hath made supreme 
Move his equals. Farewell, happy fields, 


Where joy for ever dwells ! Hail, horrors, hail I 
Infernal world, and thou, profoundest hell, 

Receive thy new possessor ; one who brings 
A mind not to be changed by place or time. 

The mind is its own place, and in itself 
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven. 

What matter where, if I be still the same 1 
And what I should be, all but less than he 
Whom thunder hath made greater Here at least 
We shall be free; the Almighty hath not built 
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence; 

Here we may reign secure, and in my choice 
To reign is worth ambition, though in hell; * 
Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven 1” 

I might multiply passages of the same kind ; 
but I dare only allude to the proposition made 
of assaulting the throne of God “ with Tarta¬ 
rean sulphur and strange fire, his own invented 
torments ” and to the address of Satan to the 
newly-created sun, in which he actually curses 
the love of God. Suppose that last passage 
introduced into this indictment—suppose that 
instead of the unintelligible lines beginning 
“ They have three words, God, Hell, and Heaven ,” 
we had these— Fe then His love accursed with 
the innuendo, “ Thereby meaning the love of Al¬ 
mighty God” how would you deal with the 
charge] How! but by looking at the object 
of the great poem of which those words are 
part; by observing how the poet, incapable of 
resting in a mere abstraction, had been led 
insensibly to clothe it from the armory of vir¬ 
tue and grandeur; by showing that although 
the names of the Almighty and Satan were re¬ 
tained, in truth, other ideas had usurped those 
names, as the theme itself had eluded even 
Milton’s grasp ! I will not ask you whether 
you agree with me in the defence which might 
be made for Milton ; but I will ask, do you not 
feel with me that these are matters for another 
tribunal] Do you not feel with me that ex¬ 
cept that the boldness of Milton’s thoughts 
comes softened to the ears by the exquisite 
beauty of Milton’s language, I may find paral¬ 
lels in the passages I have quoted from the 
Paradise Lost, for those selected for prosecu¬ 
tion from Queen Mab] Do you not feel with 
me that, as without a knowledge of the Para¬ 
dise Lost, you could not absolve the publisher 
of Milton from the prosecution of “ some mute 
inglorious” Hetherington ; so neither can you, 
dare you, convict Mr. Moxon of a libel on God 
and religion, in publishing the works of Shel¬ 
ley, without having read and studied them all ? 
If rashly you assail the mighty masters of 
thought and fantasy, you will, indeed, assail 
them in vain, for the purpose of suppression, 
though not for the purpose of torture; all you 
can do is to make them suffer, as being human, 
they are liable to corporal suffering; but, like 
the wounded spirits of Milton, “ they will soon 
close,” “ confounded, though immortal!” 

If, however, these are considerations affect¬ 
ing the exercise of human genius on themes 
beyond its grasp, which we cannot discuss in 
this place, however essential to the decision of 
the charge, there is one plain position which I 
will venture to assert: that the poetry which 
pretends to a denial of God or of an immor¬ 
tal life, must contain its own refutation in it¬ 
self, and sustain what it would deny ! A poet, 
though never one of the highest order, may 




156 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


M link vice to a radiant angelhe may diffuse 
luxurious indifference to virtue and to truth ; 
but he cannot inculcate atheism. Let him 
strive to do it, and like Balaam, who came to 
curse, like him he must end in blessing ! His 
art convicts him ; for it is “ Eternity revealing 
itself in Time!” His fancies maybe wayward, 
his theories absurd, but they will prove, no less 
in their failure than in their success, the divi¬ 
nity of their origin, and the inadequacy of this 
world to give scope to his impulses. They are 
the beatings of the soul against the bars of its 
clay tenement, which though they may ruffle 
and sadden it, prove that it is winged for a di¬ 
viner sphere ! Young has said, “ An undevout 
astronomer is mad ;” how much more truly 
might he have said, an atheist poet is a con¬ 
tradiction in terms ! Let the poet take what 
range of associations he will—let him adopt 
what notions he may—he cannot dissolve his 
alliance with the Eternal. Let him strive to 
shut out the vistas of the future by encircling 
the present wuth images of exquisite beauty; 
his own forms of ideal grace will disappoint 
him with eternal looks, and vindicate the im¬ 
mortality they were fashioned to veil! Let him 
rear temples, and consecrate them to fabled di¬ 
vinities, they will indicate in their enduring 
beauty “ temples not made with hands, eter¬ 
nal in the heavens !” If he celebrates the de¬ 
lights of social intercourse, the festal reference 
to their fragility includes the sense of that 
which must endure; for the very sadness 
which tempers them speaks the longing after 
that “which prompts the eternal sigh.” If he 
desires to bid the hearts of thousands beat as 
one man at the touch of tragic passion, he 
must present “ the future in the instant,”—show 
in the death-grapple of contending emotions a 
strength which death cannot destroy—vindicate 
the immortality of affection at the moment when 
the warm passages of life are closed against it; 
and anticipate in the virtue which dares to die, 
the power by which “mortality shall be swal¬ 
lowed up of life !” The world is too narrow fer 
lis. Time is too short for man,—and the poet 
only feels the sphere more inadequate, and 
pants for the “ all-hail hereafter,” with more 
urgent sense of weakness than his fellows :— 
Too—too contracted are these w alls of flesh, 

This vital heat too cold ; these visual orbs, 

Though inconceivably endow’d, too dim 
For any passion of the soul which leads 
To ecstasy, and ail the frigid bonds 
Of time and change disdaining, takes the range 
Mong the line of limitless desires ! 

If this prosecution can succeed, on what 
principle can the publishers of the great works 
of ancient times, replete with the images of 
idolatrous faith, and with moralities only to be 
endured as historical, escape a similar doom ? 
These are the w orks which engage and reward 
the first labours of our English youth,—which, 
in spite of the objections raised to them, prac¬ 
tically teach lessons of beauty and wisdom— 
the sense of antiquity—the admiration of heroic 
daring and suffering; and refine and elevate 
their lives. It was destined in the education 
of the human race, that imperfect and faint 
suggestions of truth, combined with exquisite 
perceptions of beauty, should in a few teeming 


years give birth to images of grace w'hich, un¬ 
touched by time, people the retreats which are 
sought by youthful toil, and make learning 
lovely. Why shall not these be brought, with 
the poetry of Shelley, within the range of cri¬ 
minal jurisdiction? Because, with all their 
beauty, they do not belong to the passions of the 
present time,—because they hold their domi¬ 
nion apart from the realities w'hich form the 
business of life,—because they a/e presented 
to the mind as creations of another sphere, to 
be admired, not believed. And yet, without 
prosecution—without offence—one of the great¬ 
est and purest of our English poets, wearied 
w’ith the selfishness w'hich he saw pervading a 
Christian nation, has dared an ejaculating 
wish for the return of those old palpable shapes 
of divinity, when he exclaimed, 

« Great God! I’d rather be 

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn, 

So might I, standing on some pleasant lee, 

Have glimpses which may makejne less forlorn, 
Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea, 

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn ! 

And the fantasies of Queen Mab, if not so 
compact of imagination, are as harmless now 
as those forms erf Grecian deities w'hich Words¬ 
worth thus invokes! Pure—passionless—they 
u'ere wdiile their author lived; they have 
growm classic by that touch of death w'hich 
stopped the generous heart and teeming fancj' 
of their fated author. They have no more in¬ 
fluence on living opinion, than that wmrld of 
beauty to W'hich Shelley adverts, w'hen he ex¬ 
claims in “ Hellas,” 

Biit Greece and her foundations are 
Built below the tide of war, 

Based on the crystalline sea 
Of thought and its eternity. 

Having considered this charge chiefly as 
affecting poetry, I must not forget that the last 
passage selected by the Prosecutor is in prose, 
culled from the essay which wrns appended to 
the poem of “Queen Mab,” disclaimed by the 
editor—disclaimed by Shelley long before he 
reached the prime of manhood—but rightly 
preserved, shocking as it is in itself, as essen¬ 
tial to the just contemplation of his moral and 
intellectual nature. They form the dark 
ground of a picture of surpassing interest to 
the philosopher. There shall you see a poet 
whose fancies are most ethereal, struggling 
with a theory gross, material, shallow’, imaging 
the great struggle by which the Spirit of the 
Eternal seeks to subdue the material world to 
its uses. IIis genius was pent up within the 
hard and bitter rind of his philosophy, as 
Ariel was in the rift of (he cloven pine; and 
what w’onder if a Spirit thus enthralled should 
send forth strange and discordant cries? Be¬ 
cause the words which those strange voices 
syllabled are recorded here, will you say the 
record is a crime? I recollect in the speech 
of that great ornament of our profession, Mr. 
Erskine, an illustration of the injustice of se¬ 
lecting part of a conversation or of a book, 
and because singly considered it is shocking, 
charging a criminal intent on the utterer or 
the publisher; which, if, at first.it may not 




SPEECH IN THE CASE OF THE QUEEN v. MOXON. 


157 


seem applicable to this case, will be found es¬ 
sentially to govern it. He refers to the pas¬ 
sage in the Bible, “ The fool hath said in his 
heart, There is no God,” and shows how the pub¬ 
lisher of the Book of God itself might be 
charged with atheism, by the insertion ‘only 
of the latter division of the sentence. It is not 
surely by the division of a sentence only that 
the context may be judged ; but by the general 
intent of him who publishes what is in itself 
offensive, for the purpose of curious record— 
of controversy—of evidence—of example. The 
publisher of Shelley has not indeed said “ The 
fool hath said in his heart, There is no God 
but he has in effect said, The poet has tried to 
say with his lips ‘’There is no God,” but his 
genius and his heart belie his words! What 
indeed does the publisher of Shelley’s works 
virtually say, where he thus presents to his 
readers this record of the poet’s life and death 1 
He says—Behold! Here is a spectacle which 
angels may admire and weep over! Here is 
a poet of fancy the most ethereal—feelings the 
most devout—charity the most Christian—en¬ 
thralled by opinions the most cold, hollow, and 
debasing! Here is a youth endowed with 
that sensibility to the beautiful and the grand 
which peoples his minutes with the perceptions 
of years—who, with a spirit of self-sacrifice 
which the eldest Christianity might exult in if 
found in one of its martyrs, is ready to lay down 
that intellectual being—to be lost in loss itself 
—if by annihilation he could multiply the en¬ 
joyments and hasten the progress of his spe¬ 
cies—and yet, with strange wilfulness, reject¬ 
ing that religion in form to which in essence 
he is imperishably allied! Observe these 
radiant fancies—pure and cold as frostwork— 
how would they be kindled by the warmth of 
Christian love ! Track those “ thoughts that 
wander through eternity,” and think how they 
would repose in their proper home! And 
trace the inspired, yet erring youth, poem afier 
poem—year after year, month after month— 
how shall you see the icy fetters which en¬ 
circle his genius gradually dissolve; the 
wreaths of mist ascend from his path; and the 
distance spread out before him peopled with 
human affections, and skirted by angel wings! 
See how this seeming atheist begins to adore— 
how the divine image of suffering and love 
presented at Calvary, never unfelt, begins to 
be seen—and in its contemplation the softened, 
not yet convinced poet exclaims, in his Pro¬ 
metheus, of the followers of Christ— 

The wise, the pure, the lofty, and the just, 

Whom thy slaves hate —for b.eing- like to thee! 

And thus he proceeds—w r ith light shining 
more and more towards the perfect day, which 
ne was not permitted to realize in this world. 
As you trace this progress, alas ! Heath veils 
it—veils it, not stops it—and this perturbed, 
imperfect, but glorious being is hidden from 
us—“Till the sea shall give up its dead!’’ 
What say you now to the book which exhibits 
this spectacle, and stops with this catastrophe ! 
Is it a libel on religion and God 1 Talk of 
proofs of Divine existence in the wonders of 
the material universe, there is nothing in any— 
nor in all—compared to the proof which this 


indicted volume conveys! What can the 
telescope disclose of worlds and suns and sys¬ 
tems in the heavens above us, or the micro¬ 
scope detect in the descending scale of various 
life, endowed with a speech and a language 
like that with which Shelley, being dead, here 
speaks ? Not even do the most serene pro¬ 
ductions of poets, whose faculties in this world 
have attained comparative harmony—strongly 
as they plead for the immortality of the mind 
which produced them—afford so unanswerable 
a proof of a life to come, as the mighty em¬ 
bryo which this book exhibits;—as the course, 
the frailty, the imperfection, with the dark 
curtain dropped on all! It is, indeed, when 
best surveyed, but the infancy of an eternal 
being; an infancy wayward but gigantic; an 
infancy which we shall never fully understand, 
till we behold its development “ when time 
shall be no more”—when doubt shall be dis¬ 
solved in vision—“when this corruptible shall 
have put on incorruption, and when this 
mortal shall have put on immortality !” 

Let me, bef >re I sit down, entreat you to ask 
yourselves where the course of prosecution 
will stop if you crown with success Mr. Heth- 
eringlon’s revenge. Revenge, did I say! I 
recall the word. Revenge means the returning 
of injury for injury—an emotion most unwise 
and unchristian, but still human;—the-satis¬ 
faction of a feeling of ill-regulated justice che¬ 
rished by a heart which judges bitterly in its 
own cause. But this attempt to retaliate on 
one who is a stranger to the evil suffered—this 
infliction of misery for doing that which the 
prosecutor has maintained within these works 
the right of all men to do—has no claim to the 
savage plea of wild justice; but is poor, cruel, 
paltry injustice; as bare of excuse as ever 
tyrant, above or below the opinion of the wise 
and good, ever ventured to threaten. Admit 
its power in this case—grant its right to select 
for the punishment of blasphemy the exhibi¬ 
tion of an anomaly as harmless as the stuffed 
aspic in a museum, or as its image on the 
passionless bosom of a pictured Cleopatra— 
and what ancient, what modern history, shall 
be lent unchallenged to our friends? If the 
thousand booksellers who sell the “Paradise 
Lost”—from the greatest publisher in London 
or Edinburgh down to the proprietor of the 
little book-stall, where the poor wayfarer 
snatches a hasty glance at the grandeur and 
beauty of the poet, and goes on his way re¬ 
freshed—may hope that genius will render to 
the namd of Milton what they deny to that of 
Shelley ; what can they who sell “ The History 
of the Decline and Fall of tl^e Roman Empire” 
hope frorx^ the prosecutor of “Queen Mab ?” 
In that work are two celebrated chapters, 
sparkling with all the meretricious felicities 
of epigrammatic style, which, full of polished 
sarcasm against infant Christianity, are elabo¬ 
rately directed to wither the fame of its Martyrs 
and Confessors with bitterest scorn—two 
chapters which, if published at a penny each, 
would do more mischief than thousands of 
metaphysical poems; but which, retained in 
their apppropriate place, to be sought only by 
the readers of history, may serve the cause of 
truth by proving the poverty of the spite bv 
O 






158 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


which it has been assailed, and find ample 
counterpoise in the sequel. The possibility 
that this history should be suppressed by some 
descendant of Gibbon, who might extrava¬ 
gantly suppose it his duty to stifle cold and 
crafty sneers aimed at the first followers of 
Christ, was urged—and urged with success— 
against me when I pleaded for the right of 
those descendants to the fruits of the labours 
of their ancestor; yet, if you sanction this 
attempt, any Hetherington may compel by law 
that suppression, the remote possibility of 
which has been accepted as a reason for deny¬ 
ing to the posterity of the author a property in 
the work he has created ! This work, invested 
with the peculiar interest which belongs to the 
picture of waning greatness, has recently been 
printed in a cheap form, under the sanction of 
a dignitary of the Established Church—a 
Christian Poet of the noblest aim—whose early 
genius was the pride of our fairest university, 
and who is now the honoured minister of the 
very parish in which we are assembled. If I 
were now defending Mr. Milman, of whose 
friendship I am justly proud, for this last and 
cheapest and best edition of Gibbon, I could 
only resort to the arguments I am now urging 
for Mr. Moxon, and claim the benefit of the 
same distinction between the tendency of a 
book adapted to the promotion of infidelity, and 
one which, containing incidental matter of 
offence, is commended to the student with 
those silent guards which its form and accom¬ 
paniments supply. True it is that Mr. Milman 
has accompanied the text with notes in which 
he sometimes explains or counteracts the in¬ 
sinuations of the author; but what Notes can 
be so effectual as that which follows “ Queen 
Mab”—in which Shelley’s own letter is set 
forth, stating, on his authority, that the work 
was immature, and that he did not intend it for 
the general eye ! Is not the publication of this 
letter by the publisher as decisive of his mo¬ 
tive—not to commend the wild fancies and 
stormy words of the young poet to the reader’s 
approval, but to give them as part of his 
biography,—as the notes of Mr. Milman are 
of that which no one doubts, his desire to make 
the perusal of Gibbon healthful ! Prosper this 
attempt, and what a field of speculative prose¬ 
cution will open before us! Every publisher 
of the works of Rousseau, of Voltaire, of Vol- 
ney, of Hume—of the Classics and of their 
Translations—works regarded as innoxious, 
because presented in a certain aspect and 
offered to a certain class, will become liable to 
every publisher of penny blasphemy who may 
suffer or hate or fear the law;—nor of such 
only, but of every small attorney in search of 
practice, who may find in the machinery of the 
Crown-office the facilities of extortion. Nor 
will the unjust principle you are asked to sanc¬ 
tion stop with retaliation in the case of alleged 
blasphemy—the retailer of cheap lascivious¬ 
ness, if checked in his wicked trade, will have 
his revenge against the wrnrks of the mighty 
dead in which some tinge of mortal stain may 
unfortunately be detected. The printer of one 
of those penny atrocities which are thrust into 
the hands of ingenuous youths when bound on 
duty or innocent pleasure, the emissaries of 


which—children often themselves—mount the 
chariot and board the steamboat to scatter that 
poison which may infect the soul as long as 
the soul shall endure—whom, to do this prose¬ 
cutor justice, I know he disclaims—may obtain 
true bills of indictment against any man, who 
has sold Horace, or Virgil, or Lucretius, or 
Ovid, or Juvenal—against all who have sold a 
copy of any of our old dramatists—and thus 
not only Congreve, and Farquhar, and Wych¬ 
erley, but Fletcher, and Massinger, and Ford, 
and Webster, and Ben Jonson ; nay, with reve¬ 
rence be it spoken, even Shakspeare, though 
ever pure in essence, may be placed at the 
mercy of an insect abuser of the press—unless 
juries have the courage and the virtue to 
recognise the distinction between a man who 
publishes works which are infidel or impure, 
because they are infidel or impure, and publishes 
them in a form and at a price which indicate 
the desire that they should work out mischief, 
and one who publishes works in which evil of 
the same kind may be found, but who publishes 
them because, in spite of that imperfection, 
they are on the whole for the edification and 
delight of mankind;—between one who ten¬ 
ders the mischief for approbation, and one who 
exposes it for example. And are you pre¬ 
pared to succumb to this new censorship! 
Will you allow Mr. Hetherington to prescribe 
what leaves you shall tear from the classic 
volumes in your libraries! Shall he dictate 
to you how much of Lord Byron—a writer far 
more influential than Shelley—you shali be 
allowed to lend to your friends without fear of 
his censure! Shall he drag into court the 
vast productions of the German mind, and ask 
juries to decide whether the translator of 
Goethe, Schiller, Wieland, and Lessing—deal¬ 
ing with sacred things with a boldness to 
which we are unused—are guilty of crime! 
Shall he call for judgment on that stupendous 
work, the “ Faust,” with its prologue in Hea¬ 
ven, which has been presented by my friend 
Mr. Hayward, whose able assistance I have 
to-day, with happy vividness to English read¬ 
ers—and ask a jury to take it in their hand, 
and at an hour’s glance to decide whether it is 
a libel on God, or a hymn by Genius to His 
praise! Do you not feel those matters are 
for other seasons—for another sphere!—If 
so, will you, in the dark—without knowledge 
—without evidence—sanction a prosecution 
which will, in its result, impose new and 
strange tasks on juries who may decide on 
other trials; which may destroy the just 
allowance accorded to learning even under 
absolute monarchies; and place every man 
who hereafter shall print, or sell, or give, or 
lend, any one of a thousand volumes sanc¬ 
tioned by ages, at the mercy of any Prose¬ 
cutor who for malice—for gain—or mere mis¬ 
chief, may choose to denounce him as a 
blasphemer! 

And now, I commend into your hands the 
cause of the defendant—the cause of genius 
—the cause of learning—the cause of history 
—the cause of thought. I have not sought to 
maintain it by assailing the law as it has been 
expounded by courts, and administered by 
juries; which, if altered, should be changed 





159 


SPEECHES ON THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT. 


by the authority of the legislature, and neither 
by the violation of oaths, nor by the machinery 
which the prosecutor has employed to render 
it odious at the cost of those whom he himself 
contends to be guiltless; but I have striven to 
convince you, that by a just application of that 
law, you may hold this publication of the 
works of Shelley to be no crime. It has been 
fairly conceded that Mr. Moxon is a most re¬ 
spectable publisher; one who has done good 
service to the cause of poetry and wisdom; 
and one who could not intentionally publish a 
blasphemous work, without treason to all the 
associations which honour his life. Beginning 
his career under the auspices of Rogers, the 
eldest of a great age of poets, and blessed with 
the continued support of that excellent person, 
who never broke by one unworthy line the 
charm of moral grace which pervades his 
works, he has been associated with Lamb, 
whose kindness embraced all sects, all parties, 
all classes, and whose genius shed new and 
pleasant lights on daily life; with Southey, the 
pure and childlike in heart; with Coleridge, 
in the light of whose Christian philosophy 
these indicted poems would assume their true 
character as mournful, yet salutary specimens 
of power developed imperfectly in this world ; 
and with Wordsworth, whose works so long 
neglected or scorned, but so long silently nur¬ 


turing tastes for the lofty and the pure, it has 
been Mr. Moxon’s privilege to diffuse largely 
throughout this and other lands, and with them 
the sympathies which link the human heart to 
nature and to God, and all classes of mankind 
to each other! Reject then, in your justice, 
the charge which imputes to such a man, that 
by publishing this book, he has been guilty of 
blasphemy against the God whom he reveres! 
Refuse to set the fatal precedent, which will 
not only draw the fame of the illustrious dead 
into question before juries, without time to in¬ 
vestigate their merits; which may not only 
harass the first publishers of these works; but 
which will beset the course of every book¬ 
seller, every librarian, throughout the country, 
with perpetual snares, and make our criminal 
courts the arenas for a savage warfare of 
literary prosecutions! Protect our noble litera¬ 
ture from the alternative of being either cor¬ 
rupted or enslaved! Terminate those anxie¬ 
ties which this charge, so unprovoked—so un¬ 
deserved—has now for months inflicted on the 
defendant, and his friends, by that verdict of 
Not Gmlly, which will disappoint only those 
who desire that cheap blasphemy should have 
free course; which the noblest, and purest, and 
most pious of your own generation will rejoice 
in; and for which their posterity will honour 
and bless you! 


* 

SPEECH ON THE MOTION EOit LEAVE TO BRING IN A BILL 
TO AMEND THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT, 

Delivered in' the House or Coxmoxs, Thursday, May 18, 1837. 


Mr. Speaker, —In venturing to invite the at¬ 
tention of the House to the state of the law' af¬ 
fecting the property of men of letters in the 
results of their genius and industry, I feel that 
it is my duty to present their case as concisely 
as its nature will permit. While I believe that 
heir claims to some share in the consideration 
of the legislature will not be denied, I am 
aware that they appeal to feelings far different 
from those which are usually excited by the 
intellectual conflicts of this place ; that the in¬ 
terest of their claim is not of that stirring kind 
which belongs to the busy present, but reflects 
back on the past, of which the passions are 
now silent, and stretches fonvard with specu¬ 
lation into the visionary future; and that the 
circumstances which impede their efforts and 
frustrate their reward, are best appreciated in 
the calmness of thought to which those efforts 
are akin. I shall therefore intrude as briefly 
as I can on the patience of the House, while I 
glance at the history of the evils of which they 
complain; suggest the principles on which I 
think them entitled to redress ; and state the 
outlines of the remedies by which I propose to 
relieve them. 

It is, indeed, time that literature should ex¬ 
perience some of the blessings of legislation; 


for hitherto, with the exception of the noble 
boon conferred on the acted drama by the bill 
of my honourable friend the member for Lin¬ 
coln, it has received scarcely any thing but 
evil. If we should now simply repeal all the 
statutes which have been passed under the 
guise of encouraging learning, and leave it to 
be protected only by the principles of the com¬ 
mon law, and the remedies which the common 
law could supply, I believe the relief would be 
welcome. It did not occur to our ancestors, 
that the right of deriving solid benefits from 
that which springs solely from within us—the 
right of property in that which the mind itself 
creates, and which, so far from exhausting the 
materials common to all men, or limiting their 
resources, enriches and expands them—a right 
of property which, by the happy peculiarity of 
its nature, can only be enjoyed by the proprie¬ 
tor in proportion as it blesses mankind—should 
be exempted from the protection which is ex¬ 
tended to the ancient appropriation of the soil, 
and the retvards of commercial enterprise. By 
the common law of England, as solemnly ex¬ 
pounded by a majority of seven to four of the 
judges in the case of “Donaldson v. Beckett,” 
and as sustained by the additional opinion of 
Lord Mansfield, the author of an original wor 







160 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


had Fon eveh the sole right of multiplying co¬ 
pies, and a remedy by action, incident to every 
right, against any one who should infringe it. 
The jurisdiction of the Star Chamber, while it 
restrained the freedom of the press, at the same 
time incidentally preserved the copyright from 
violation ; and this was one of the pleas urged 
for the power of licensing; for Milton, in his 
immortal pleading for unlicensed printing, 
states, as one of the glosses of his opponents, 

“ the just retaining by each man of his several 
copy, which God forbid should be gainsaid,” 
In the special verdict in “Miller v. Taylor,” 
(1769,) it was found as a fact, “ that before the 
reign of Queen Anne, it was usual to purchase 
from authors the perpetual copyright of their 
books, and to assign the same from hand to 
hand for valuable considerations, and to make 
them the subject of family settlements.” In 
truth, the claim of the author to perpetual 
copyright was never disputed, until literature 
had received a fatal present in the first act of 
parliament “For its encouragement”—the 8th 
Arnne, c. 19, passed in 1709; in which the mis¬ 
chief lurked, unsuspected, for many years be¬ 
fore it was called into action to limit the rights 
it professed, and it was probably intended, to 
secure. By that act, the sole right of printing 
and reprinting their works was recognised in 
authors for the term of fourteen years, and, if 
they should be living at its close, for another 
period of the same duration,—and piracy was 
made punishable during those periods by the 
forfeiture of the books illegally published, and 
of a penny for every sheet in the offender’s cus¬ 
tody—one-half to the use of the queen’s ma¬ 
jesty—the other halfpenny, not to the poor au¬ 
thor, whose poverty the sum might seem to 
befit, but to the informer; and the condition of 
enjoying these summary remedies, was the en¬ 
try of the work at Stationers’ Hall. This act, 

“ For the encouragement of learning,” which, 
like th'e priest in the fable, while it vouchsafes 
the blest ing denies the farthing, also confers a 
power on the Archbishop of Canterbury and 
other great functionaries to regulate the prices 
of books, which was rejected by the Lords, re¬ 
stored on conference with the Commons, and 
repealed in the following reign ; and also con¬ 
fers on learning the benefit of a forced contri¬ 
bution of nine copies of every work, on the best 
paper, for the use of certain libraries. Except 
in this last particular, the act seems to have 
remained a dead letter down to the year 1760, 
no one, as far as I can trace, having thought it 
worth while to sue for its halfpennies, and no 
one having suggested that its effect had been 
silently to restrict the common-law right of 
authors to the term during which its remedies 
were to operate. So far was this construction 
from being suspected, that in this interval of 
fifty years the Court of Chancery repeatedly in¬ 
terfered by injunction to restrain the piracy of 
books in which the statutable copyright had 
long expired. This protection was extended in 
1735 to “The Whole Duty of Man,” the first 
assignment of which had been made seventy- 
eight years before; in the same year to the 
“Miscellanies of Pope and Swift;” in 1736 to 
“Nelson’s Festivals and Fasts;” in 1739 to! 


the “Paradise Lost;” and in 1752 to the 
same poem, with a life of the author, and the 
notes of all preceding editions. Some doubts 
having at length arisen, the question of the 
operation of the statute was, in 1760, raised by 
a sort of amicable suit, “Tonson v. Collins,” 
respecting the “Spectator,” in which the Court 
of Common Pleas inclined to the plaintiff, but 
before giving judgment discovered that the 
proceeding was collusive, and refused to pro¬ 
nounce any decision. In 1766 an action was 
brought, “ Miller v. Taylor,” for pirating 
“Thomson’s Seasons,” in the Court of King’s 
Bench, before whom it was elaborately argued, 
and which, in 1769, gave judgment in favour of 
the subsisting copyright; Lord Mansfield, Mr. 
Justice Willes, and Mr. Justice Aston, holding 
that copyright was perpetual by the common 
law, and not limited by the statute, except as to 
penalties, and Mr. Justice Yates dissenting 
from them. In 1774 the question was brought 
before the House of Lords, when eleven judges 
delivered their opinions upon it—six of whom 
thought the copyright limited, while five held 
it perpetual; and Lord Mansfield, who would 
have made the numbers equal, retaining his 
opinion, but expressing none. By this bare 
majority—against the strong opinion of the 
chief justice of England—was it decided that 
the statute of Anne has substituted a short term 
in copyright for an estate in fee, and the rights 
of authors were delivered up to the mercy of 
succeeding parliaments ! 

Until this decision, the copyright vested in 
the universities had only shared the protection 
which it was supposed had existed for all, and 
in fact their copyright was gone. But they im¬ 
mediately resorted to the legislature and ob¬ 
tained an act, 15 George III., c. 63, “For ena¬ 
bling the two universities in England, the four 
universities of Scotland, and the several col¬ 
leges of Eton, Westminster, and Winchester, 
to hold in perpetuity the copyright in books 
given or bequeathed to them for the advance¬ 
ment of learning and the purposes of educa¬ 
tion ; and the like privilege was, by 41 George 
III., c. 107, extended to Trinity College, Dub¬ 
lin. With the immunities thus conferred on 
the universities, or rather with this exemption 
from the wrong incidentally inflicted on indi¬ 
viduals, I have no intention to interfere; nei¬ 
ther do I seek to relieve literature from the 
obligation, recently lightened by the just con¬ 
sideration of parliament, of supplying the prin¬ 
cipal universities with copies of all works at 
the author’s charge. I only seek to apply the 
terms of the statute, which recites that the pur¬ 
poses of those who bequeathed copyright to the 
universities for the advancement of learning 
would be frustrated unless the exclusive right 
of printing and reprinting such books be se¬ 
cured in perpetuity, to support the claim of in¬ 
dividuals to some extended interest in their 
own. I only ask that some of the benefits en¬ 
joyed by the venerable nurseries of learning 
and ofgenius should attend the works of those 
whose youth they have inspired and fostered, 
and of those also who, although fortune has 
denied to them that inestimable blessing, look 
! with reverence upon the great institutions of 




161 


SPEECHES ON THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT. 


their country, and feel themselves in that reve¬ 
rence not wholly strangers to the great body of 
associations they nourish. 

The next act, 41 George III., c. 107, passed 
immediately after the Union, did little besides 
including Ireland in the general law of copy¬ 
right ; conferring on Trinity College, Dublin, 
the privilege of English universities; prohi¬ 
biting the importation of books from abroad 
Which had been originally printed in the United 
Kingdom ; and increasing the penalty on pira¬ 
cies from Id. to 3d. per sheet. But in the year 
1814, by the statute of 54 George III., c. 156, 
which is the principal subsisting act on the 
subject of literary copyright, reciting “That it 
would afford further encouragement to litera¬ 
ture, if the duration of copyright were further 
extended,” enlarges it to the absolute term of 
twenty-eight years; and if the author shall 
survive that time, secures it to him for the re¬ 
mainder of his life. Since then the legislature 
has extended its protection to two classes of 
composition which before were left in a condi¬ 
tion to invite piracy—to the actual drama, by 
the measure of 3 William IV., c. 15, and to 
lectures, by 5 and 6 William IV., c. 65—and 
has, by an act of last session, lightened the load 
of one of the blessings conferred by the legis¬ 
lature, by reducing the copies which authors 
are privileged to render to five ; but the term 
of twenty-eight years, with the possible rever¬ 
sion beyond that time for life, is all authors 
have yet obtained in return for that inherit¬ 
ance of which the statute of Anne incidentally 
deprived them. 

This limitation of the ancient rights of au¬ 
thorship has not been compensated by uni¬ 
formity in the details of the law, by simplicity 
in the modes of proving the right or of transfer¬ 
ring it, or by the cheapness or adequacy of 
the remedies. The penal clauses have proved 
wholly worthless. Engravings, etchings, maps, 
and charts, which are regulated by other sta¬ 
tutes, are secured to the author for twenty- 
eight years, but not, like books, for the contin¬ 
gent term of life. Instead of the registration 
at Stationers’ Hall, which has been holden not 
necessary to the right of action, the work must 
bear the date and the name of the proprietor; 
but no provision is made in either case for 
cheap transfer. Now, I propose to render the 
law of copyright uniform, as to all books and 
■works of art; to secure to the proprietor the 
same term in each ; to give one plan of regis¬ 
tration and one mode of transfer. As the sta¬ 
tioner’s company have long enjoyed the con¬ 
trol over the registration of books, I do not 
propose to take it from them, if they are willing 
to retain it with the increased trouble, com¬ 
pensated by the increased fees which their 
officer will be entitled to receive. I propose 
that, before any proceeding can be adopted for 
the violation of copyright, the author, or his 
assignee, shall deposit a copy of the work, 
whether book or engraving, and cause an en¬ 
try to be made in the form to be given in the 
act of the proprietorship of the work, whether 
absolute or limited ; and that a copy of such 
entry, signed by the officer, shall be admitted 
in all courts as prima facie evidence of the pro¬ 
perty. I propose that any transfer should be 


registered in like manner in a form also to be 
given by the act; that such transfer shall be 
proved by a similar copy ; and that in neither 
case shall any stamp be requisite. 

At present great uncertainty prevails as to 
the original right of property in papers sup¬ 
plied to periodical works or written at the in¬ 
stance of a bookseller, and as to the right of 
engraving from original pictures. However 
desirable it maybe that these questions should 
be settled, it is impossible to interfere with 
the existing relations of booksellers and au¬ 
thors, or of patrons of art and artists. Nei¬ 
ther, for the future, do I propose to lay down 
any rule as to the rights which shall originally 
be expressed or implied between the parties 
themselves ; l^nt that the right of copy shall be 
registered as to such books, pictures or en¬ 
gravings, only with the consent of both ex¬ 
pressed in writing, and when this is done shall 
be absolute in the party registered as owner. 
At present, an engraver or publisher, who has 
given a large sum for permission to engrave a 
picture, and expended his money or labour in 
the plate, may be met by unexcepted com¬ 
petition, for which he has no remedy. By 
making the registration not the condition of 
the right itself, but of the remedy by action 
or otherwise, the independence of contracting 
parties will be preserved, and this evil avoided 
for the future. A competent tribunal will still 
be wanting; its establishment is beyond the 
scope of my intention or my power; but I feel 
that complete justice will not be done to Litera¬ 
ture and Art until a mode shall be devised for 
a cheap and summary vindication of their in¬ 
juries before some parties better qualified to 
determine it than judges who have passed 
their lives in the laborious study of the law, 
or jurors who are surrounded with the cares 
of business, and, except by accident, little ac¬ 
quainted'with the subjects presented to them 
for decision. 

But the main object of the bill which I con¬ 
template is—I will not use those words of ill 
omen, “ the further advancement of learning,” 
but—for additional justice to learning, by the 
further extension of time during which au¬ 
thors shall enjoy the direct pecuniary benefit 
immediately flowing from the sale of their own 
works. 

Although I see no reason why authors should 
not be restored to that inheritance which, un¬ 
der the name of protection and encourage¬ 
ment, has been taken from them, I feel that 
the subject has so long been treated as matter 
of compromise between those who deny that 
the creations of the inventive faculty, or the 
achievements of reason, are the subjects of 
property at all, and those who think the pro¬ 
perty should last as long as the works which 
contain truth and beauty live, that I propose 
still to treat it on the principle of compromise, 
and to rest satisfied with a fairer adjustment 
of the difference than the last Act of Parlia¬ 
ment affords. I shall propose—subject to 
modification when the details of the measure 
shall be discussed—that the term of property 
in all works of learning, genius, and art, to be 
produced hereafter, or in which the statutable 
copyright now subsists, shall be extended to 




162 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


sixty years, to be computed from the death of 
the author; which will at least enable him, 
while providing for the instruction and the de¬ 
light of distant ages, to contemplate that he 
shall leave in his works themselves some 
legacy to those- for whom a nearer, if not a 
higher duty, requires him to provide, and 
which shall make “ death less terrible.” When 
the opponents of literary property speak of 
glory as the reward of genius, they make an 
ungenerous use of the very nobleness of its 
impulses, and show how little they have pro¬ 
fited by its high example. When Milton, in 
poverty and in blindness, fed the flame of his 
divine enthusiasm by the assurance of a du¬ 
ration coequal with his language, I believe 
with Lord Camden that no thought crossed 
him of the wealth which might be amassed by 
the sale of his poem ; but surely some shadow 
would have been cast upon “ the clear dream 
and solemn vision ” of his future glories, had 
he foreseen that, while booksellers were striv¬ 
ing to rival each other in the magnificence of 
their editions, or their adaptation to the con¬ 
venience of various classes of his admirers, 
his only surviving descendant—a woman— 
should be rescued from abject want only by 
the charily of Garrick, who, at the solicitation 
of Dr. Johnson, gave her a benefit at the the¬ 
atre which had appropriated to itself all that 
could be represented of Comus. The libe¬ 
rality of genius is surely ill urged as an excuse 
for our ungrateful denial of its rights. The 
late Mr. Coleridge gave an example not merely 
of its liberality, but of its profuseness; while 
he sought not even to appropriate to his fame 
the vast intellectual treasures which he had 
derived from boundless research, and coloured 
by a glorious imagination; while he scattered 
abroad the seeds of beauty and of wisdom to 
take root in congenial minds, and was content 
to witness their fruits in the productions of 
those who heard him. But ought we, there¬ 
fore, the less to deplore, now when the music 
of his divine philosophy is for ever hushed, 
that the earlier portion of those works on 
which he stamped his own impress—all which 
he desired of the world- that it should recog¬ 
nise as his—is published for the gain of others 
than his children—that his death is illustrated 
by the forfeiture of their birthright] What 
justice is there in this ] Do we reward our 
heroes thus] Did we tell our Marlboroughs, 
our Nelsons, our Wellingtons, that glory was 
their reward, that they fought for posterity, 
and that posterity would pay them ! We leave 
them to no such cold and uncertain requital; 
we do not even leave them merely to enjoy 
the spoils of their victories, which we deny 
to the author; we concentrate a nation’s ho¬ 
nest feeling of gratitude and pride into the 
form of an endowment, and teach other ages 
what we thought, and what they ought to think, 
of their deeds, by the substantial memorials 
of our praise. Were our Shakspeare and Mil- 
ton less the ornaments of their country, less 
the benefactors of mankind] Would the ex¬ 
ample be less inspiring if we permitted them 
to enjoy the spoils of their peaceful victories— 
if we allowed to their descendants, not the tax 
assessed by present gratitude, and charged on 


the Future, but the mere amount which that 
•Future would be delighted to pay—extending 
as the circle of their glory expands, and ren¬ 
dered only by those who individually reap the 
benefits, and are contented at once to enjoy 
and to reward its author! 

But I do not press these considerations to 
the full extent; the Past is beyond our power, 
and I only ask for the present a brief rever¬ 
sion in the Future. “Riches fineless ” cre¬ 
ated by the mighty dead are already ours. It 
is in truth the greatness of blessings which 
the world inherits from genius that dazzles 
the mind on this question; and the habit of 
repaying its bounty by words, that confuses 
us and indisposes us to justice. It is because 
the spoils of time are freely and irrevocably 
ours—because the forms of antique beauty 
wear for us the bloom of an imperishable 
youth—because the elder literature of our 
own country is a free mine of wealth to the 
bookseller and of delight to ourselves, that 
we are unable to understand the claim of 
our contemporaries to a beneficial interest in 
their works. Because genius by a genial ne¬ 
cessity communicates so much, we cannot 
conceive it as retaining any thing for its pos¬ 
sessor. There is a sense, indeed, in which 
the poets “ on earth have made us heirs of 
truth and pure delight in heavenly lays ;” and 
it is because of the greatness of this very 
boon—because their thoughts become our 
thoughts, and their phrases unconsciously en¬ 
rich our daily language—because their works, 
harmonious by the law of their own nature, 
suggest to us the rules of composition by 
which their imitators should be guided—be¬ 
cause to them we can resort, and “in our 
golden urns draw light,” that we cannot fancy 
them apart from ourselves, or admit that they 
have any property except in our praise. And 
our gratitude is shown not only in leaving 
their descendants without portion in the pecu¬ 
niary benefits derived from their works, but in 
permitting their fame to be frittered away in 
abridgments, and polluted by base intermix¬ 
tures, and denying to their children even the 
cold privilege of watching over and protect¬ 
ing it! 

~~ There is something, sir, peculiarly unjust 
in bounding the term of an author’s property 
by his natural life, if he should survive so 
short a period as twenty-eight years. It de¬ 
nies to age and experience the probable reward 
it permits to youth—to youth, sufficiently full 
of hope and joy, to slight his promises. It 
gives a bounty to haste, and informs the labo¬ 
rious student, who would wear away his 
strength to complete some work which “the 
world will not willingly let die,” that the more 
of his life he devotes to its perfection, the 
more limited shall be his interest in its fruits. 
It stops the progress of remuneration at the 
moment it is most needed, and when the be¬ 
nignity of Nature would extract from her last 
calamity a means of support and comfort to 
survivors. At the season when the author’s 
name is invested with the solemn interest of 
mortality—when his eccentricities or frailties 
excite a smile or a sneer no longer—when the 
last seal is set upon his earthly course, and 



1G3 


SPEECHES ON THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT. 


his works assume their place among the clas¬ 
sics of his country, your law declares that his 
works shall become your property, and you 
requite him by seizing the patrimony of his 
children. We blame the errors and excesses 
of genius, and we leave them—justly leave 
them—for the most part, to the consequences 
of their strangely blended nature. But if ge¬ 
nius, in assertion of its diviner alliances, pro¬ 
duces large returns when the earthly course 
of its frail possessor is past, why is the pub¬ 
lic to insult his descendants with their alms 
and their pity I What right have we to moral¬ 
ize over the excesses of a Burns, and insult 
his memory by charitable honours, while we 
are taking the benefit of his premature death, 
in the expiration of his copyright and the 
vaunted cheapness of his works ! Or, to ad¬ 
vert to a case in which the highest intellec¬ 
tual powers were associated with the noblest 
moral excellence, what right have we to take 
credit to ourselves for a paltry and ineffectual 
subscription to rescue Abbotsford for the fa¬ 
mily of its great author, (Abbotsford, his ro¬ 
mance in stone and mortar, but not more indi¬ 
vidually his than those hundred fabrics, not 
made with hands, which he has raised, and 
peopled for the delight of mankind,) while we 
insist on appropriating now the profits of his 
earlier poems, and anticipate the time when, 
in a few years, his novels will be ours without 
rent-charge to enjoy—and any one’s to copy, 
to emasculate, and to garble I This is the 
case of one whom kings and people delighted 
to honour. But look on another picture—that 
of a man of genius and integrity, who has re¬ 
ceived all the insult and injury from his con¬ 
temporaries, and obtains nothing from poste¬ 
rity but a name. Look at Daniel De Foe; 
recollect him pilloried, bankrupt, wearing 
away his life to pay his creditors in full, and 
dying in the struggle!—and his works live, 
imitated, corrupted, yet casting off the stains, 
not by protection of law, but by their own 
pure essence. Had every school-boy, whose 
young imagination has been prompted by his 
great work, and whose heart has learned to 
throb in the strange, yet familiar, solitude he 
created, given even the halfpenny of the sta¬ 
tute of Anne, there would have been no want 
of a provision for his children, no need of a 
subscription for a statue to his memory ! 

The term allowed by the existing law is 
curiously adapted to encourage the lightest 
works, and to leave the noblest unprotected. 
Its little span is ample for authors who seek 
only to amuse ; who, “ to beguile the time, look 
like the time who lend to frivolity or corrup¬ 
tion “lighter wings to fly;” who sparkle, 
blaze, and expire. These may delight for a 
season —glisten as the fire-flies on the heaving 
sea of public opinion—the airy proofs of the 
intellectual activity of the age yet surely it 
is not just to legislate for those alone, and deny 
all reward to that literature which aspires to 
endure. Let us suppose an author, of true 
original genius, disgusted with the inane phra¬ 
seology which had usurped the place of poetry, 
and devoting himself from youth to its service; 
disdaining the gauds which attract the care¬ 
less, and unskilled in the moving accidents of 


fortune—not seeking his triumph in the tem¬ 
pest of the passions, but in the serenity which 
lies above them—whose works shall be scoffed 
at—whose name made a by-word—and yet 
wdio shall persevere in his high and holy 
course, gradually impressing thoughtful minds 
with the sense of truth made visible in the 
severest forms of beamy, until he shall create 
the taste by -which he shall be appreciated— 
influence, one after another, the master-spirits 
of his age—be felt pervading every part of the 
national literature, softening, raising, and en¬ 
riching it; and -when at last he shall find his 
confidence in his own aspirations justified, 
and the name which once was the scorn ad¬ 
mitted to be the glory of his age—he shall look 
forward to the close of his earthly career, as 
the event that shall consecrate his fame and 
deprive his children of the opening harvest he 
is beginning to reap. As soon as his copy¬ 
right becomes valuable, it is gone ! This is no 
imaginary case—I refer to one who “in this 
setting part of time” has opened a vein of the 
deepest sentiment and thought before unknown 
—who has supplied the noblest antidote to the 
freezing effects of the scientific spirit of the 
age—who, while he has detected that poetry 
which is the essence of the greatest things, 
has cast a glory around the lowliest conditions 
of humanity, and traced out the subtle links 
by which they are connected with the highest 
—of one whose name will now find an echo, 
not'only in the heart of the secluded student, 
but in that of the busiest of those who are 
fevered by political controversy—pf William 
Wordsworth. Ought we not to requite such 
a poet, while yet we may, for the injustice of 
our boyhood! For those works which are 
now insensibly quoted by our most popular 
writers, the spirit of which now mingles with 
our intellectual atmosphere, he probably has 
not received through the long life he has de¬ 
voted to his art, until lately, as much as the 
same labour, with moderate talent, might 
justly produce in a single year. Shall the 
law, whose term has been amply sufficient to 
his scorners, now afford him no protection, 
because he has outlasted their scoffs—because 
his fame has been fostered amidst the storms, 
and is now the growth of years! 

There is only one other consideration to 
which I will advert, as connected with this 
subject—the expedience and justice of ac¬ 
knowledging the rights of foreigners to copy¬ 
right in this country, and of claiming it from 
them for ourselves in return. If at this time 
it were clear that our law afforded no protec¬ 
tion to foreigners, first publishing in other 
countries, there would be great difficulty in 
dealing with this question for ourselves, and 
we might feel bound to leave it to negotiation 
to give and to obtain reciprocal benefits. But 
if a recent decision on the subject of musical 
copyright is to be regarded as correct, the 
principle of international copyright is already 
acknowledged here, and there is little for us to 
do in order that we maybe enabled to claim its 
recognition from foreign states. It has been 
decided by a judge conversant with the busi¬ 
ness and with the elegancies of life to a degree 
unusual with an eminent lawyer—by one wh 



164 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


was the most successful advocate of his time, 
yet who was not more remarkable for his skill 
in dealing with facts than for the grace with 
which he embellished them—by Lord Abinger 
—that the assignee of foreign copyright, de¬ 
riving title from the author abroad to publish 
in this country, and creating that right within 
a reasonable time, may claim the protection 
of our courts against any infringement of his 
copy.* If this is law—and I believe and trust 
it is—we shall make no sacrifice in so declaring 
it, and in setting an example which France, 
Prussia, America, and Germany, are prepared 
to follow. Let us do justice to our law and to 
ourselves. At present, not only is the literary 
intercourse of countries, who should form one 
great family, degraded into a low series of 
mutual piracies—not only are industry and 
talent deprived of their just reward, but our 
literature is debased in the eyes of the world, 
by the wretched medium through which they 
behold it. Pilfered, and disfigured in the pilfer¬ 
ing, the noblest images are broken, wit falls 
pointless, and verse is only felt in fragments 
of broken music ;—sad fate for an irritable 
race ! The great minds of our time have now 
an audience to impress far vaster than it en¬ 
tered into the minds of their predecessors to 
hope for; an audience increasing as popula¬ 
tion thickens in the cities of America, and 
spreads itself out through its diminishing wilds, 
who speak our language, and who look on our 


old poets as their own immortal ancestry. And 
if this our literature shall be theirs; if its dif¬ 
fusion shall follow the efforts of the stout heart 
and sturdy arm in their triumph over the ob¬ 
stacles of nature ; if the woods, stretching be¬ 
yond their confines, shall be haunted with 
visions of beauty which our poets have 
created; let those who thus are softening the 
ruggedness of young society have some present 
interest about which affection may gather, and 
at least let them be protected from those who 
would exhibit them mangled or corrupted to 
their transatlantic disciples. I do not in truth 
ask for literature favour; Ido not ask for it 
charity; I do not even appeal to gratitude in 
its behalf; but I ask for it a portion, and but a 
portion, of that common justice which the 
coarsest industry obtains for its natural reward, 
and which nothing but the very extent of its 
claims, and the nobleness of the associations 
to which they are akin, have prevented it from 
receiving from our laws. 

Sir, I will trespass no longer on the patience 
of the house, for which I am most grateful, but 
move that leave be given to bring in a bill “ to 
consolidate and amend the laws relating to 
property in the nature of copyright in books, 
musical compositions, acted dramas, pictures, 
and engravings, to provide remedies for the 
violation thereof, and to extend the term of its 
duration.” 


The motion, seconded by the Chancellor of the Exchequer and supported by Sir Robert 
Harry Inglis, was carried without opposition; and the bill was ordered to be brought in by Six 
Robert Harry Inglis, Lord Mahon, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in conjunction with 
the mover. The bill which under these auspices was introduced, contained, according to the 
proposition, clauses for the protection of the arts of painting and engraving, and provided for 
the recognition and security of copyright in the works of foreign authors, on certain condi¬ 
tions. Its second reading was carried without debate or division ; and it stood for committal 
when the death of the king precluded the further progress of all measures except those of ur 
gency, and in a few weeks produced the dissolution of parliament. On the 14th December, 
1838, the motion for leave to introduce the bill was renewed—with the difference that it had 
been found expedient to confine the measure to literature, and to defer until a suitable oppor 
tunity the introduction of a separate measure for consolidating and amending the laws affect 
ing the arts of painting, engraving, and also that of sculpture, which had not been included iv. 
the original measure. This separation of the objects of the bill received the approbation ol 
Lord Mahon, who had previously concurred in its necessity, and of Sir Robert Peel, who sug 
gested the expedience of appointing a select committee to report on the state of the law relat¬ 
ing to the fine arts, before proceeding to the arduous but most needful work of legislating for their 
protection, and securing their reward. On this occasion, also, that part of the original mea¬ 
sure which related to international copyright was, at the request of Mr. Poulett Thomson, re¬ 
signed into the hands of ministers, under whose auspices a bill has since passed, enabling 
them to negotiate on this important subject with foreign powers. After expressions of ap° 
proval from Sir Edward Lytton Bulwer and Mr. D’lsraeli, leave was given to brin" in the bill. 
The circumstances and character of the opposition which had, in the interval,"been raised 
against it, sufficiently appear from the following speech on the motion that it be read a second 
time. 


* D’Almaine and another v. Bossey, 1 Younge and Collyer’s Reports 288 

This case has been since overruled by that of Chappell v. Purday, in which the Court of Exchequer decided 
that a foreigner has no copyright in a work first published abroad. quer aeciQea 






SPEECHES ON THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT. 


165 


SPEECH ON THE MOTION FOR THE SECOND READING OF THE 
BILL TO AMEND THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT, 

Delivered in the House of Commons, Wednesday, Afril 25 , 1838 . 


Mr. Speaker,— When I had the honour last 
year to move the second reading of a bill 
essentially similar to the present, I found it 
unnecessary to trouble the house with a single 
remark; for scarcely a trace then appeared 
ot the opposition which has since gathered 
around it. I do not, however, regret that the 
measure was not carried through the legisla¬ 
ture by the current of feeling which then pre¬ 
vailed in its favour, but that opportunity has 
been afforded for the full discussion of the 
claims on which it is founded, and of the con¬ 
sequences to individuals and to the public that 
may be expected from its operation. Believing, 
as I do, that the interests of those who, by 
intellectual power, laboriously and virtuously 
exerted, contribute to the delight and instruc¬ 
tion of mankind—of those engaged in the me¬ 
chanical processes by which those labours are 
made effectual—and of the people who at once 
enjoy and reward them, are essentially one; 
believing that it is impossible at the same time 
to enhance the reward of authors, and to injure 
those who derive their means of subsistence 
from them—and desiring only that this bill 
shall succeed if it shall be found, on the fullest 
discussion, that it will serve the cause of 
intellect in its noblest and most expanded 
sense; I rejoice that all classes who are 
interested in reality or in belief in the proposed 
change have had the means of presenting their 
statements and their reasonings to the con¬ 
sideration of Parliament, and of urging them 
with all the zeal which an apprehension of 
pecuniary loss can inspire. I do not, indeed, 
disguise that the main and direct object of the 
bill is to insure to authors of the highest and 
most enduring merit a larger share in the 
fruits of their own industry and genius than 
our law now accords to them; and whatever 
fate may attend the endeavour, I feel with 
satisfaction that it is the first which has been 
made substantially for the benefit of authors, 
and sustained by no interest except that which 
the appeal on their behalf to the gratitude of 
those whose minds they have enriched, and 
whose lives they have gladdened, has enkindled. 
The statutes of Anne and of George III., espe¬ 
cially the last, were measures suggested and 
maintained by publishers; and it must be con¬ 
soling to the silent toilers after fame, who in 
this country have no ascertained rank, no civil 
distinction, in their hours of weariness and 
anxiety to feel that their claim to consideration 
has been cheerfully recognised by Parliament, 
and that their cause, howeven feebly presented, 
has been regarded with respect and with sym¬ 
pathy. 

In order that I may trespass as briefly as I 
can on the indulgence with which this subject 
has been treated, I will attempt to narrow the 


controversy of to-night by stating at once what 
I regard to be the principle of this bill, and call 
on honourable members now to affirm—and 
what I regard as matters of mere detail, which 
it is unnecessary at this moment to consider. 
That principle is, that the present term of 
copyright is much too short for the attainment 
of that justice which society owes to authors, 
especially to those (few though they be) whose 
reputation is of slow growth and of enduring 
character. Whether that term shall be ex¬ 
tended from its present length to sixty years, 
or to some intermediate period—whether it 
shall commence at the death of the author or 
at the date of first publication—in what man¬ 
ner it shall be reckoned in the cases of works 
given to the world in portions—are questions 
of detail on which I do not think the house are 
to-night required to decide. On the one hand, 
I do not ask honourable members to vote for 
the second reading of this bill merely because 
they think there are some uncertainties in the 
law of copyright which it is desirable to 
remove, or some minor defects which they are 
prepared to remedy. On the other hand, I en¬ 
treat them not to reject it on account of any 
objections to its mere details ; but as they may 
think the legalized property of authors suffi¬ 
ciently prolonged and secured, or requiring a 
substantial extension, to oppose or to support it. 

In maintaining the claim of authors to this 
extension, I will not intrude on the time of the 
house with any discussion on the question of 
law—whether perpetual copyright had exist¬ 
ence by our common law; or of the philo¬ 
sophical question, whether the claim to this 
extent is founded in natural justice. On the 
first point, it is sufficient for me to repeat, 
what cannot be contradicted, that the existence 
of the legal right was recognised by a large 
majority of the judges, with Lord Mansfield at 
their head, after solemn and repeated argu¬ 
ment; and that six to five of the judges only 
determined that the stringent words “and no 
longer'” in the statute of Anne had taken that 
right away. And even this I do not call in aid 
so much by way of legal authority, as evidence 
of the feeling of those men (mighty, though 
few,) to whom our infant literature was con¬ 
fided by Prov'dence, and of those who were in 
early time able to estimate the labour which 
we inherit. On the second point I will say 
nothing; unable, indeed, to understand why 
that which springs wholly from within, and 
contracts no other right by its usurpation, is 
to be regarded as baseless, because, by the 
condition of its very enjoyment, it not only 
enlarges the source of happiness to readers, 
but becomes the means of mechanical employ 
ment to printers, and of speculation to pub 
Ushers. I am content to adopt the interme* 




166 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


diate course, and to argue the question, whe¬ 
ther a fair medium between two extremes has 
been chosen. What is to be said in favour of 
the line now drawn, except that it exists and 
bears an antiquity commencing in 1814 1 Is 
there any magic in the term of twenty-eight 
years 1 Is there any conceivable principle of 
justice which bounds the right, if the author 
survives that term, by the limit of his natural 
life! As far as expediency shall prevail— 
as far as the welfare of those for whom it is 
the duty and the wish of the dying author to 
provide, maybe regarded by Parliament; the 
period of his death is precisely that when they 
will most need the worldly comforts which the 
property in his works would confer. And, as 
far as analogy may govern, the very attribute 
which induces us to regard with pride the 
works of intellect is, that they survive the 
mortal course of those who framed them—that 
they are akin to what is deathless. Why 
should that quality render them profitless to 
those in whose affectionate remembrance their 
author still lives, while they attest a nobler 
immortality I Indeed, among the opponents 
of this measure, it is ground of cavil that it is 
proposed to take the death of the author as a 
starting point for the period which it adds to 
the present term. It is urged as absurd that 
even the extent of this distant period should 
be affected by the accident of death; and yet 
those who thus argue are content to support 
the system which makes that accident the final 
boundary at which the living efficacy of 
authorship, for the advantage of its professors, 
ceases. 

I perfectly agree with the publishers in the 
evidence given in 1818, and the statements 
which have been repeated more recently—that 
the extension of time will be a benefit only in 
one case in five hundred of works now issuing 
from the press; and I agree with them that 
we are legislating for that five hundredth case. 
Why not 1 It is the great prize which, out of 
the five hundred risks, genius and goodness 
win. It is the benefit that can only be achieved 
by that which has stood the test of time—of 
that which is essentially true and pure—of that 
which has survived spleen, criticism, envy, 
and the changingfashions of the world. Grant¬ 
ed that only one author in five hundred attains 
this end ; does it not invite many to attempt it, 
and impress on literature itself a visible mark 
of permanence and of dignity ? The writers 
who attain it must belong to one of two classes. 
The first class consists of authors who have 
laboured to create the taste which should ap¬ 
preciate and reward them, and only attain that 
reputation which brings with it a pecuniary 
recompense when the term for which that re¬ 
ward is secured to them wanes. Is it unjust 
in this case, which is that of Wordsworth, now 
in the evening of life, and in the dawn of his 
fame, to allow the author to share in the re¬ 
muneration that society tardily awards him 1 
The other classes includes those who, like Sir 
Walter Scott, have combined the art of minis¬ 
tering to immediate delight with that of out¬ 
lasting successive races of imitators and ap¬ 
parent rivals; who do receive a large actual 
amount of recompense, but whose accumulat¬ 


ing compensation is stopped when it most 
should increase. Now, surely, as to them, the 
question is not what remuneration is sufficient 
in the judgment of the legislature to repay for 
certain benefactions to society, but whether, 
having won the splendid reward, our laws shall 
permit the winner to enjoy it! We could not 
decide the abstract question between genius 
and money, because there exist no common 
properties by which they can be tested, if we 
were dispensing an arbitrary reward; but the 
question how much the author ought to receive 
is easily answered—so much as his readers 
are delighted to pay him. When we say that 
he has obtained immense wealth by his writ¬ 
ings, what do we assert, but that he has multi¬ 
plied the sources of enjoyment to countless 
readers, and lightened thousands of else sad, 
or weary, or dissolute hours'? The two pro¬ 
positions are identical; the proof of the one 
at once establishing the other. Why, then, 
should we grudge it, any more than we would 
reckon against the soldier, not the pension or 
the grant, but the very prize-money which 
attests the splendour of his victories, and in the 
amount of his gains proves the extent of ours 1 
Complaints have been made by one in the 
foremost rank in the opposition to this bill, the 
pioneer of the noble army of publishers, book¬ 
sellers, printers, and bookbinders, who are ar¬ 
rayed against it *—that in selecting the case 
of Sir Walter Scott as an instance in which the 
extension of copyright would be just, I had 
been singularly unfortunate, because that 
great writer received, during the period of sub¬ 
sisting copyright, an unprecedented revenue 
from the immediate sale of his works. But, 
sir, the question is not one of reward—it is 


* This allusion has been singularly misconceived by 
the gentleman to whom it applies—Mr. Tegg, who thus 
notices it in his letter “To the Editor of the Tones,” of 
20th Feb., 1839 : “The learned serjeant calls me a 'pioneer 
of literature, because I open my shop for the sale of books, 
and not for the encouragement of authors; but what is 
the object of my customers who, buy the books? Not 
one in a thousand would allege that he bought a book for 
the encouragement of the author; they come to procure 
the means of amusement, information, or instruction. The 
learned serjeant—a liberal—a friend to literature, a pro¬ 
moter of education—persists in bringing forward an ex 
post facto law, to counteract the advantages of education, 
to check the diffusion of literature, and to abridge the 
innocent entertainment of the public, by enhancing the 
price of books. I glory in the difference of our position.” 
It will be seen by the comparison of the text and the 
comment, that Mr. Tegg is mistaken in supposing I had 
called him “ a pioneer of literature.” I only called him 
the pioneer of the opponents of the bill;—and that he is 
equally mistaken in supposing that I complained that he 
opens his shop for the sale of books, and not for the en- 
•couragement of authors. I ask for no encouragement to 
authors, but that which arises from the purchase of books 
by those who seek in them “the means of amusement, 
information and instruction;”—who voluntarily tax 
themselves for their own benefit*—and I venture to 
think that, as the gains of the publisher are just as effec¬ 
tually added to the price of a book as those of its author, 
it would be as beneficial to the public if the author of a 
book shared in the profit with the bookseller, even after 
the period to which the law now confines his interesl 
in his own work, and when Mr. Tegg’s good office in 
“opening his shop for its sale” sometimes commences 
So far from regarding Mr. Tegg as the “pioneer of lite¬ 
rature,” I have always contemplated him in the very 
opposite position,—as a follower of the march, whom 
the law allows to collect the spoils which it denies 
to the soldier who has fought for them. He has abun¬ 
dant reason, no doubt, “to glory in the difference of his 
position” and mine ; but he quite mistakes his own, if ha 
think he has any relation to literature, except as the 
depository of its winnings. 





SPEECHES ON THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT. 


167 


one of justice. How would this gentleman 
•-.pprove of the application of a similar rule to 
his own honest gains! From small beginnings 
this very publisher has, in the fair and honour¬ 
able course of trade, I doubt not, acquired a 
splendid fortune, amassed by the sale of works, 
the property of the public—of works, whose 
authors have gone to their repose, from the 
fevers, the disappointments, and the jealousies 
which await a life of literary toil. Who grudges 
it to him ! Who doubts his title to retain it] 
And yet this gentleman’s fortune is all, every 
farthing of it, so much taken from the public, 
in the sense of the publisher’s argument; it is 
all profit on books bought by that public, the 
accumulation of pence, which, if he had sold 
his books without profit, would have remained 
in the pockets of the buyers. On what princi¬ 
ple is Mr. Tegg to retain what is denied to Sir 
Walter] Is it the claim of superior merit] 
Is it greater toil ! Is it larger public service 1 
His course, I doubt not, has been that of an 
honest laborious tradesman ; but what have 
been its anxieties, compared to the stupendous 
labour, the sharp agonies of him, whose deadly 
alliance with those very trades whose mem¬ 
bers oppose me now, and whose noble resolu¬ 
tion to combine the severest integrity with the 
loftiest genius, brought him to a premature 
grave—a grave which, by the operation of the 
law, extends its chillness even to the result of 
those labours, and despoils them of the living 
efficacy to assist those whom he has left to 
mourn him! Let any man contemplate that 
heroic struggle of which the affecting record 
has just been completed; and turn from the 
sad spectacle of one who had once rejoiced in 
the rapid creation of a thousand characters 
glowing from his brain, and stamped with in¬ 
dividuality for ever, straining the fibres of the 
mind till the exercise which had been delight 
became torture—girding himself to the mighty 
task of achieving his deliverance from the load 
which pressed upon him, and with brave en¬ 
deavour, but relaxing strength, returning to the 
toil till his faculties give way, the pen falls 
from his hand on the unmarked paper, and the 
silent tears of half-conscious imbecility fall 
upon it—to some prosperous bookseller in his 
country house, calculating the approach of the 
time (too swiftly accelerated) when he should 
be able to publish for his own gain those works 
fatal to life,—and then tell me, if we are to ap¬ 
portion the reward to the effort, where is the 
justice of the bookseller’s claim 1 Had Sir 
Walter Scott been able to see, in the distance, 
an extension of his own right in his own pro¬ 
ductions, his estate and his heart had been set 
free, and the publishers and printers, who are 
our opponents now, would have been grateful 
to him for a continuation of labour and re¬ 
wards which would have impelled and aug¬ 
mented their own. 

These two classes comprise, of necessity, 
all the instances in which the proposed change 
would operate at all; the first, that of those 
whose copyright only becomes valuable just 
as it is about to expire ; the last, that of whose 
works which, at once popular and lasting, 
have probably, in the season of their first suc¬ 
cess, enriched the publisher far more than the 


author. It will not be denied that it is desira¬ 
ble to extend the benefit to both classes, if it 
can be done without injury to the public, or to 
subsisting individual interests. The suggested 
injury to the public is, that the price of books 
would be greatly enhanced; and on this as¬ 
sumption the printers and bookbinders have 
been induced to sustain the publishers in re¬ 
sisting a change which is represented as tend¬ 
ing to paralyze speculation—to cause fewer 
books to be written, printed, bound, and bought 
—to deprive the honest workmen of their sub¬ 
sistence, and the people of the opportunity of 
enjoying the productions of genius. Even if 
such consequences are to be dreaded, and jus¬ 
tice requires the sacrifice, it ought to be made. 
The community have no right to be enriched 
at the expense of individuals, nor is the Li¬ 
berty of the Press (magic words, which I have 
heard strangely blended in the din of this con¬ 
troversy) the liberty to smuggle and to steal. 
Still, if to these respectable petitioners, men 
often of intelligence and refinement beyond 
their sphere, whicjj they have acquired from 
their mechanical association with literature, 
I could think the measure fraught with such 
mischiefs, I should regard it with distrust 
and alarm. But never, surely, were the ap¬ 
prehensions of intelligent men so utterly 
baseless. In the first place, I believe that the 
existence of the copyright, even in that five- 
hundredth case, would not enhance the price 
of the fortunate work; for the author or the 
bookseller, who enjoys the monopoly, as it is 
called, is enabled to supply the article at a 
much cheaper rate when a single press is re¬ 
quired to print all the copies offered for sale, 
instead of the presses and establishments of 
competing publishers ; and I believe a com¬ 
parison between the editions of standard works 
in which there is copyright, with those in 
which there is none, would confirm the truth 
of the inference.* To cite, as an instance to 
the contrary, “Clarendon’s History of the Re¬ 
bellion,” is to confess that a fair test would 
disprove the objection ; for what analogy is 
there between the motives and the acts of a 
great body, having no personal stimulus or 
interest, except to retain what is an ornament 
to their own power, and those of a number of 
individual proprietors! But, after all, it is 
only in this five-hundredth case—the one rare 
prize in this huge lottery—that even this effect 
is to be dreaded. Now, this effect is the pos¬ 
sible enhancing the price of five-hundredth 
or five-thousandth book, and this is actually 
supposed “ to be a heavy blow and great dis¬ 
couragement to literature,” enough to paralyze 
the energies of publishers, and to make Pater- 
noster-row a desert! Let it only be announced, 
say our opponents, that an author, whose works 
may outlast twenty-eight years, shall bequeath 
to his children the right which he enjoyed, that 


* The case of the Scriptures seems decisive on this 
point,—on which the entire argument against the bill 
hinges. In the First of Books there is perpetual copy¬ 
right; and does any one believe it would be cheaper 
than it is if it were the subject of competition? The truth 
is, that the. only way in which the printer could suffer by 
the extension of copyright is by a process which would 
make books cheaper;—the employment of one press, in 
stead of many, to produce the same number of copies. 




1G8 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


possibly some sixpence a volume may be added 
to its price in such an event, and all the ma¬ 
chinery of printing and publication will come 
to a pause! Why, sir, the same apprehension 
was entertained in 1813, when the publishers 
sought to obtain the extension of copyright for 
their own advantage to twenty-eight years. 
The printers then dreaded the effect of the 
prolonged monopoly: they petitioned against 
the bill, and they succeeded in delaying it for 
a session. And surely they had then far greater 
plausibility in their terrors; for in proportion 
as the period at which the contemplated exten¬ 
sion begins is distant, its effects must be in¬ 
distinct and feeble. Fewer books, of course, 
will survive twenty-eight years than fourteen ; 
the act of 1814 operated on the greater number 
if at all; and has experience justified the fears 
which the publishers then laughed to scorn ? 
Has the number of books diminished since 
then ?. Has the price of books been enhanced 1 
Has the demand for the labour of printers or 
bookbinders slackened? Have the profits of 
the bookseller failed? I need no committee 
of inquiry to answer these questions, and they 
are really decisive of the issue. We all know 
that books have multiplied; that the quartos, 
in which the works of high pretension were 
first enshrined, have vanished; and, while 
the prices paid for copyrights have been far 
higher than in any former time, the proprietors 
of these copyrights have found it more profit¬ 
able to publish in a cheap than in a costly 
form. Will authors, or the children of authors, 
be more obstinate—less able to appreciate and 
to meet the demands of the age—more appre¬ 
hensive of too large a circulation—when both 
will be impelled by other motives than those 
of interest to seek the largest sale ; the first by 
the impulse of blameless vanity or love of fame; 
the last by the affection and the pride with 
which they must regard the living thoughts 
of a parent taken from this world, finding their 
way through every variety of life, and cherished 
by unnumbered minds, which will bless that 
parent’s memory? 

If, sir, I were called to state in a sentence the 
most powerful argument against the objection 
raised to the extension of copyright on the 
part of the public, I would answer,—“ The op¬ 
position of the publishers.” If they have ground 
to complain of loss, the public can have none. 
The objection supposes that the works would 
be sold at something more than the price of the 
materials, the workmanship, and a fair profit 
on the outlay, if the copyright be continued to 
the author; and, of course, also supposes that 
works of which the copyrights have expired 
are sold without profit beyond those charges— 
that, in fact, the author’s superadded gain will 
be the measure of the public loss. Where, 
then, does the publisher intervene ? Is the 
truth this—that the usage of the publishing 
trade at this moment indefinitely prolongs the 
monopoly by a mutual understanding of its 
members, and that besides the term of twenty- 
eight years, which the publisher has bought 
and paid for, he has something more ? Is it a 
conventional copyright that is in danger? Is 
the real question whether the author shall here¬ 
after have the full term to dispose of, or shall sell 


a smaller term, and really assign a greater? 
Now, either the publishers have no interest in 
the main question, or this is that interest. If 
this is that interest, how will the public lose 
by paying their extra sixpence to the author 
who created the work, instead of the gentleman 
who prints his name at the foot of the title- 
page, and who will still take his 25 per cent, 
on the copies he may sell? This argument 
applies, and, I apprehend, conclusively, to the 
main question—the justice and expediency of 
extending the term. I am aware that there is 
another ground of complaint more plausible, 
which does not apply to the main question, but 
to what is called the retrospective clause—a 
complaint, that in cases where the extended 
term will revert to the family of the author, 
instead of excluding, by virtue of an implied 
compact, all the rest of the world, they, like all 
the rest of the world, will be excluded; that they 
had a right to calculate on this liberty in com¬ 
mon with others when they made this bargain ; 
and that, therefore, it is a violation of faith to 
deprive them of their share of the common 
benefit. That there is any violation of faith I 
utterly deny—they still have all they have paid 
for; and when, indeed, they assert (which 
they do when they argue that the measure will 
confer no benefit on authors) they would not 
give an author any more for a copyright of 
sixty than of twenty-eight years, they them¬ 
selves refute the charge of breach of faith, by 
showing that they do not reckon such distant 
contingencies in the price which they pay. If 
any inconvenience should arise, I should re¬ 
joice to consider how it can be obviated; and 
with that view I introduced those clauses 
which have been the subject of much censure, 
empowering the assignee to dispose of all 
copies on hand at the close of his term, and 
allowing the proprietors of stereotype plates 
still to use them. But supposing some incon¬ 
venience to attend this act of justice to au¬ 
thors, which I should greatly regret, still are 
the publishers entirely without consolation? 
In the first place, they would, as the bill now 
stands, gain all the benefit of the extension of 
future copyrights, hereafter sold absolutely to 
them by the author, and, according to their own 
statement, without any advance of price. If 
this benefit is small—is contingent—is nothing 
in 500 cases to one, so is the loss in those 
cases in which the right will result to the au¬ 
thor. But it should further be recollected that 
every year, as copyrights expire, adds to the 
store from which they may take freely. In the 
infancy of literature a publisher’s stock is 
scanty unless he pays for original composition; 
but as one generation after another passes 
away, histories, novels, poems—all of undying 
interest and certain sale—fall in; and each 
generation of booksellers becomes enriched 
by the spoils of time, to which he has contri¬ 
buted nothing. If, then, in a measure \Vhich 
restores to the author what the bookseller has 
conventionally received, some inconvenience 
beyond the just loss of what he was never en¬ 
titled to obtain be incurred, is not the balance 
greatly in his favour ? And can it be doubted 
that, in any case where the properties of the 
publisher and of the author’s representatives 




SPEECHES ON THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT. 


169 


are imperfect apart, either from additions to 
the original, or from the succession of several 
works falling in at different times, their com¬ 
mon interest would unite them? 

One of the arguments used, whether on be¬ 
half of the trade or the public I scarcely know, 
against the extension of the term, is derived 
from a supposed analogy between the works 
of an author and the discoveries of an inventor, 
whence it is inferred that the term which suf¬ 
fices for the protection of the one is long enough 
for the recompense of the other. It remains to 
be proved that the protection granted to paten¬ 
tees is sufficient; but supposing it to be so, 
although there are points of similarity between 
the cases, there are grounds of essential and 
obvious distinction. In cases of patent, the 
merits of the invention are palpable; the de¬ 
mand is usually immediate; and the recom¬ 
pense of the inventor, in proportion to the utility 
of his work, speedy and certain. In cases of 
patent, the subject is generally one to which 
many minds are at once applied; the invention 
is often no more than a step in a series of pro¬ 
cesses, the first of which being given, the con¬ 
sequence will almost certainly present itself 
sooner or later to some of those minds; and 
if it were not hit on this year by one, would 
probably be discovered the next by another; 
but who will suggest that if Shakspeare had 
not written Lear, or Richardson Clarissa, other 
poets or novelists would have invented them ? 
In practical science every discovery is a step 
to something more perfect; and to give to the 
inventor of each a protracted monopoly would 
be to shut out improvement by others. But 
who can improve the masterpieces of genius ? 
They stand perfect; apart from all things else; 
self-sustained; the models for imitation; the 
sources whence rules of art take their origin. 
Still they are ours in a sense in which no me¬ 
chanical invention can be;—ours not only to 
ponder over and converse with—ours not only 
as furnishing our minds with thoughts, and 
peopling our weary seasons with ever-delight- 
ful acquaintances; but ours as suggesting 
principles of composition which we may freely 
strive to apply, opening new regions of specu¬ 
lation which we may delightfully explore, 
and defining the magic circle, within which, if 
we are bold and happy enough to tread, we 
may discern some traces of the visions they 
have invoked, to imbody for our own profit 
and honour; for the benefit of the printers 
and publishers who may send forth the pro¬ 
ducts of these secondary inspirations to the 
world; and of all who may become refined or 
exalted by reading them. 

But it may be said that this argument applies 
only to works of invention, which spring wholly 
or chiefly from the author’s mind, as poems 
and romances; and that works which exhibit 
the results of historical search, of medical or 
scientific skill, and of philosophic thought, 
ought to be governed by the same law as im¬ 
provements in mechanics employed on timber 
and metal. The analogy here is, to a cei tain 
extent, correct, so far as it applies to the fact 
discovered, the principle developed, the mode 
invented; the fallacy consists in this, that 
while the patent for fourteen years secures to 


the inventor the entire benefit of his discovery, 
the copyright does not give it to the author for 
a single hour, but, when published, it is the 
free unincumbent property of the world at 
once and for ever; all that the author retains 
is the sole right of publishing his own view of 
it in the style of illustration or argument which 
he has chosen. A fact ascertained by laborious 
inquiry becomes, on the instant, the property 
of every historian; a rule of grammar, of 
criticism, or of art, takes its place at once in 
the common treasury of human knowledge; 
nay, a theory in political economy or morals, 
once published, is the property of any man to 
accept, to analyze, to reason on, to carry out, 
to make the foundation of other kindred specu¬ 
lations. No one ever dreamed that to assume 
a position which another had discovered; to 
reject what another had proved to be falla¬ 
cious ; to occupy the table-land of recognised 
truths and erect upon it new theories, was an 
invasion of the copyright of the original 
thinker, without whose discoveries his suc¬ 
cessors might labour in vain. How earnest, 
how severe, how protracted, has been the 
mental toil by which the noblest speculations 
in regard to the human mind and its destiny 
have been conducted! Even when they attain 
to no certain results, they are no less than the 
beatings of the soul against the bars of its clay 
tenement, which show by their strength and 
their failure that it is destined and propertied 
for a higher sphere of action. Yet what right 
does the author retain in these, when he has 
once suggested them ? The divine philosophy, 
won by years of patient thought, melts into the 
intellectual atmosphere which it encircles; 
tinges the dreams and strengthens the assur¬ 
ances of thousands. The truth is, that the 
law of copyright adapts itself, by its very na¬ 
ture, to the various descriptions of composi¬ 
tion, preserving to the author, in every case, 
only that which he ought to retain. Regard it 
from its operation on the lowest species of 
authorship—mere compilation, in which it can 
protect nothing but the particular arrange¬ 
ments, leaving the materials common to all; 
through the gradations of history, of science, 
of criticism, of moral and political philosophy, 
of divinity, up to the highest efforts of the ima¬ 
gination, and it will be found to preserve nothing 
to the author, except that which is properly 
his own ; while the free use of his materials 
is open to those who would follow in his steps. 
When I am asked, why should the inventor of 
the steam-engine have an exclusive right to 
multiply its form for only fourteen years, while 
a longer time is claimed for the author of a 
book? I may retort, why should he have for 
fourteen years what the discoverer of a prin¬ 
ciple in politics or morals, or of a chain of 
proof in divinity, or a canon of criticism, has 
not the protection of as many hours, except 
for the mere mode of exposition which he has 
adopted? Where, then, the analogy between 
literature and mechanical science really exists, 
that is, wherever the essence of the literary 
work is, like mechanism, capable of being used 
and improved on by others, the legal protection 
will be found far more liberally applied to the 
latter—necessarily and justly so applied—but 

P 



170 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


affording no reason why we should take from 
the author that which is not only his own, but 
can never, from its nature, be another’s. 

It has, sir, been asserted, that authors them¬ 
selves have little interest in this question, and 
that they are, in fact, indifferent or hostile to 
the measure. True it is, that the greatest 
living writers have felt reluctant to appear as 
petitioners for it, as a personal boon; but I 
believe there are few who do not feel the 
honour of literature embarked in the cause, 
and earnestly desire its success. Mr. Words¬ 
worth, emerging for a moment from the seclu¬ 
sion he has courted, has publicly declared his 
conviction of its justice. Mr. Lockhart has 
stated his apprehension that the complete 
emancipation of the estate of Sir Walter Scott 
from its encumbrances depends on the issue; 
and, although I agree that we ought not to le¬ 
gislate for these cases, I contend that we ought 
to legislate by the light of their examples. 
While I admit that I should numoeff’ot 

mediate effect of this me jeess of th?> 
the evening of a great , w’S tile, to whom I 
am under intellectual obligations beyond all 
price, and to enlarge the rewards of other 
living authors whose far 3 * 3 will endure. J do 
not ask support to this mea«-j.r 
half; but I present these ; 
subsisting wrong. The % 

successive generations f xujus-| 


tice; but the principle is eternal. True it is 
that in many instances, if the boon be granted, 
the errors and frailties which often attend 
genius may render it vain; true it is that in 
multitudes of cases it will not operate ; but by 
conceding it we shall give to authors and to 
readers a great lesson of justice; we shall 
show that where virtue and genius combine 
we are ready to protect their noble offspring, 
and that we do not desire a miserable advan¬ 
tage at the cost of the ornaments and benefac¬ 
tors of the world. I call on each party in this 
house to unite in rendering this tribute to the 
minds by which even party associations are 
dignified. I call on those who anticipate suc¬ 
cessive changes in society, to acknowledge 
their debt to those who expand the vista of the 
future, and people it with goodly visions; on 
those who fondly linger on the past, and repose 
on time-hallowed institutions, to consider how 
much that is ennobling in their creed has been 
idrawn from minds which have clothed the 
usages and forms of other days with the sym¬ 
bols of venerableness and beauty; on all, if 
they cannot find some common ground on 
which they may unite in drawing assurance 
o f.r,'-" - ‘ od for the future from the 
. to recognise their obli- 
the products of whose intel¬ 
lect shall grace, and soften, and dignify 
the struggle! 


The motion was opposed by Mr. Hume, Mr. Warburton, the Solicitor-General, Mr. Pryne, 
Mr. Warde, Mr. Grote, the Attorney-General, Mr. John Jervis, and Sir Edward Sugden; and 
supported by Sir Robert Inglis,the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. D’lsraeli, Mr. Milnes, and 
Mr. Wynn. On the division, the numbers were, for the second reading, 39 ; against it, 34. On the 
question that the bill should be committed, Mr. Philip Howard, who had voted in favour of the 
second reading, moved that it be referred to a select committee. This was declined by the 
mover: and after a short conversation^ the house divided—for the committal of the bill in the 
usual course, 38; against it, 31,—upon which the bill was ordered to be committed on the 
following Wednesday. 

On Wednesday, 2d of May, for which day the committee was fixed, there was no house; 
and the “ dropped order” was fixed for the following Wednesday. On that day, Mr. Wakley,— 
adverting to the thinness of the house on the second reading of the bill, and the small majority 
by which it was carried,—pursuant to notice previously given, opposed the motion for the 
speaker leaving the chair. His speech on this occasion consisted chiefly of statements with 
which he had been supplied by Mr. Tegg, of the low prices at which he had purchased several 
popular works of living authors, some of whom were members of the house ;—a series of per¬ 
sonalities which afforded that kind of amusement which attend such allusions, and which, 
being delivered without ill-nature, gave no pain to the authors who were the subject of them; 
but not tending with very exact logic to show that the extension of the copyright, which pro¬ 
tected all these works, would injure the public by maintaining a price beyond its reach. The 
motion for going into committee was also opposed by Mr. Warburton and Mr. Strutt, and sup¬ 
ported by Mr. Wolverly Attwood, Mr. Milnes, and Sir Robert Inglis. On a division the num¬ 
bers were,—for the committee, 116; against it, 64. In a desultory conversation which followed, 
Sir Edward Sugden complained that, as the bill then stood, the children of an author who had 
assigned his copyright to them “in consideration of natural love and affection,” would be pre¬ 
cluded from enjoying the proposed extension—the justice of which was felt by the supporters 
of the bill—and obviated in its further progress. The house then resolved itself into committee; 
but the lateness of the hour rendered it impossible to proceed with details; and the evening 
was spent without the measure having made any progress, except in the great increase of the 
majority by which it was supported. 

The state of public business on the following Wednesdays—for which day the bill was 
always, without objection, fixed, and on which alone it had any chance of being discussed— 
prevented its further consideration till Wednesday, 6th of June. In the interval, an anxious 
consideration of the objections of the publishers of London and Edinburgh to the clause where¬ 
by a reverting interest in copyrights absolutely assigned was created in favour of authors, 
convinced those who had charge of'the bill that it was impossible by any arrangements to pre- 






171 


SPEECHES ON THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT. 

vent the inconvenience and loss which they suggested as consequential on such a boon to 
authors. They, therefore, determined to confine the operation of the bill on subsisting copy¬ 
rights to cases in which the author had retained some interest on which it might operate; and 
with this, to their honour, the publishers were satisfied. Other alterations in matters of detail 
were suggested, which induced the mover to listen to the wishes of both friends and opponents 
of the bill, that it should be reprinted and committed again. When, therefore, on Wednesday, 
6th of June, the bill again was before the house, and Mr. Warburton urged that it should be* 
reprinted, the mover at once acceded to his desire; briefly stated the principal alterations which 
he had accorded to the wishes of the publishers, and did justice to the spirit of fairness and 
moderation with which they had foreborne to ask for themselves any share of the benefits 
proposed for authors ; and had only desired that these benefits should not be attended by unde¬ 
served injury to themselves. Lord John Russell, who had hitherto refrained from expressing 
any opinion on the measure, took this opportunity of throwing out a hesitating disapproval, or 
rather, doubt, but did not object to the course proposed. The bill was accordingly committed 
pro forma, ordered to be reprinted, and its further consideration adjourned to Wednesday, 20th 
of June. In pursuance of this arrangement, the bill was reprinted in nearly its present form; 
and came on for discussion at a late hour on the 28th of June. It was then obvious that,— 
considering the opposition with which its details were menaced by Mr. Warburton and others, 
and the state of the order-book,—no reasonable hope remained of carrying it through commit¬ 
tee, and the subsequent stages, during the session. When, therefore, the period of its discus¬ 
sion arrived, it was, on the friendly recommendation of Mr. Gladstone, withdrawn, with a 
pledge for its early introduction in the ensuing 

On Tuesday, 12th of February, in the session oi .btained to bring in the 

bill, which, nearly in the state in which it had been settled tne pre^ ig year, was introduced 
the same evening. On Wednesday, 28th of February, its second reading was moved;—after 
the presentation of the petitions which are alluded to in the following sheets. 


SPEECH ON MOVING THE SECOND READING OF A BILL TO 
AMEND THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT, 

Delivered in - the House of Commons, Thursday. February 28, 1839. 


Mr. Speaker— After the attention which, in 
past sessions, has been rendered by this House 
to the interests of literature, as affected by the 
laws of copyright—an attention gratefully ac¬ 
knowledged in the petitions w'hich I have just 
presented—I shall best discharge my duty by 
reminding you, without preface, of the question 
which we once more are called on to decide, 
and by slating the position in which it stands, 
and the materials which we have to assist us 
in answering it. That question is, Whether the 
present limitation of copyright is just? I will sum 
up my reasons for contending for the negative 
in language adopted by some of the distin¬ 
guished persons whose petitions are before 
you. They allege—“That the term during 
which the law secures to the authors the profits 
arising from the productions of their own in¬ 
dustry and genius is insufficient to provide for 
the fair reward of works written to endure : that 
the extension of the term proposed by this bill 
would encourage such compositions; that it 
would enable individuals to devote their pow¬ 
ers to the lasting benefit and delight of man¬ 
kind, without the apprehension that in so doing 
they shall impoverish their own descendants ; 
and, that, while it would tend to the profit only 
of the greatest and the best of those engaged in 
literature, it would confer dignity and honour 
on the pursuits of all.” 

These propositions, to which I seek your as¬ 
sent, are now for the first time imbodied by 
some of the most distinguished authors as the 
grounds of their own prayer, and will probably 


be expressed by many others, whose feelings I 
know, if you permit this bill to proceed. When 
I first solicited for these arguments the notice 
of this House, I thought they rested on princi¬ 
ples so general; that the interests of those who 
labour to instruct and illustrate the age in 
which they live are so inseparably blended 
with all that affects its morality and its happi¬ 
ness; that the due reward of the greatest of its 
authors is so identified with the impulses they 
quicken—with the traits of character they 
mirror—with the deeds of generosity, of cou¬ 
rage and of virtue, which they celebrate, and 
with the multitudes whom they delight and re¬ 
fine, that I felt it was not for them alone that I 
asked the shelter of the law, and I did not wish 
to see them soliciting it as a personal boon. 
The appeal, though thus unsupported, was not 
unfelt; and the bill proceeded, without a hint 
of opposition, until the demise of the crown 
closed the session and stopped its progress. In 
the interval which thus occurred, a number of 
eminent publishers saw reason to apprehend 
that certain clauses in the bill, by which it was 
proposed to give to authors who had assigned 
their copyrights under the subsisting law a 
reverting interest after the expiration of its 
term, would injuriously affect their vested 
rights, and they naturally prepared to oppose 
it. They were accompanied or followed in 
this opposition by various persons connected 
with the mechanical appliances of literature— 
by master-printers, compositors, pressmen, 
type-founders, paper-makers, and book-bind- 





172 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


ers, smitten with the strange fear that to ex¬ 
tend the term of copyright (though they all 
agree that the extension would operate only in 
one case out of five hundred) would destroy 
their trade, and their petitions were plenteously 
showered on the table of the House. Regard 
to the state of public business, and a belief 
that, although supported by increasing majori¬ 
ties, the nature of the opposition with which 
the bill was threatened would multiply and 
prolong the discussions beyond the bounds of 
the time which could be applied to such an ob¬ 
ject, induced me, at the suggestion of my ho¬ 
nourable friend the member for Newark, again 
to withdraw it. Having been taunted with the 
absence of petitions in favour of the measure, I 
have now the support I did not before seek ; 
and I doubt not, the example once set will be 
followed by many who feel deeply the justice 
of the cause, and are indignant at the grounds 
on which it has been opposed. Few as these 
petitions are, compared with tb/- - 
those who desire the sue ...» Dill, I 

shall not fear to oppose the facts they state, 
the reasonings they suggest, or the authority 
with which they are stamped, with those accu¬ 
mulated by its opponents during the last ses¬ 
sion. 

Having carefully perused the petitions 
against us, I am surprised to find how utterly 
destitute they are of information really bear¬ 
ing on the case, with an exception which does 
not now apply to the bill; for I may dismiss 
the complaints of the eminent members of the 
publishing trade, and of all who sympathized 
in their fears. Impressed with the force of 
some of their objections, I proposed various 
means by which I hoped to remove them, with¬ 
out denying to authors who had assigned their 
subsisting interest the benefits of that extended 
term which it was proposed to create. But I 
was compelled to abandon the attempt as hope¬ 
less, and to content myself with applying the 
extension to the cases of authors who had re¬ 
tained an interest in their works, and to books 
hereafter to be written. In this alteration I 
have offered nothing to the publishers, except 
in the rare and peculiar case of a joint interest 
co-extensive with the entire copyright, in 
which case, unable to sever the benefit with¬ 
out extreme inconvenience to the publisher, I 
have chosen rather to grant it to both than to 
neither; and it is to the honour of the pub¬ 
lishers, that, instead of seeking an unworthy 
compromise, they have been satisfied w r ith the 
mere withdrawal of clauses which w r ould have 
subjected them to certain inconvenience, and 
probable loss. Their opposition has ceased 
with the provisions which raised it; and with 
it all the allegations in the petitions which re¬ 
late to it may be dismissed. There remain 
those of the printers and their allies, persons 
whose interests deserve the careful regard of 
the legislature, but whose opinions have no 
authority beyond the reasonings they adduce 
to support them. They are not like persons 
engaged in some occupation on which there is 
an immediate pressure, which they who feel 
most keenly can most vividly explain; nor 
like persons apprehending some change di¬ 
rectly affecting their profits, under circum¬ 


stances peculiarly within the range of their 
experience; they are mere speculators, like 
ourselves, on the probabilities of the distant 
future. All their apprehensions centre in one 
—that if the term of copyright be extended, 
fewer books will be printed ; fewer hands will 
be required; fewer presses set up; fewer 
types cast; fewer reams of paper needed; and 
(though I know not whether the panic has pe¬ 
netrated to the iron-mine or ascended to the 
rag-loft) that a paralysis will affect all these 
departments of trade. Now, if there were 
any real ground for these busy fears, they 
would not want facts to support them. In the 
year, 1814, when the term of copyright was 
extended from fourteen to twenty-eight years, 
the same classes expressed similar alarms. 
The projected change was far more likely to 
be prejudicial to them than the present, as the 
number of books on which it operated was 
much larger; and yet there is no suggestion 
in their petitions that a single press remained 
unemployed, or a paper-mill stood still; and, 
indeed, it is a matter of notoriety, that since 
then publications have greatly multiplied, and 
that books have been reduced in price with 
the increase of readers. The general argu¬ 
ments of these petitions are those which the 
opponents of the measure urge, all resolving 
themselves into the assumptions, that if copy¬ 
rights be extended, books will be dearer; that 
cheap books are necessarily a benefit to the 
public; and that the public interest should 
prevail over the claims of those who create 
the materials of its instruction. But there is 
one petition which illustrates so curiously the 
knowledge which these petitioners possess on 
the subject of their fears, and the modesty 
with which they urge them, that I must tres¬ 
pass on the patience of the House while I offer 
a specimen of its allegations. It is a petition 
presented by the honourable member for Kil¬ 
kenny, agreed on at a public meeting at the Me¬ 
chanics’ Institute, Southampton-buildings, by 
“ compositors, pressmen, and others engaged 
in the printing profession.” After a sweeping 
assumption of the whole question between au¬ 
thors and readers, these petitioners thus desig¬ 
nate the application made to this House on 
behalf of literature:—“The books to which 
it is assumed the present law does not afford 
sufficient protection are those of a trashy and 
meretricious character, whose present popu¬ 
larity deludes their writers with a vain hope 
of an immortal reputation.” Now, the works 
which were named by way of example, when 
this bill was introduced, were those of Cole¬ 
ridge, of Wordsworth, and of Sir Walter Scott; 
and if these are intended by the petitioners, I 
fear they have made no good use of cheap 
books, or that the books they have read are 
dear at any price. If the object of the bill is 
the protection of “trashy and meretricious” 
works, it may be absurd, but it must be harm¬ 
less ; for, as to such works, it must be a dead 
letter. The printers who fear that one set of 
“trashy and meretricious” works should en¬ 
dure after the lapse of twenty-eight years, and 
should thus deprive them of the opportunity 
of printing a brilliant succession of such 
works, to which they do not refuse the aid of 






SPEECHES ON THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT. 


173 


their types, partake an apprehension like the 
alarm of some nervous remainderman, who 
should take fright at the creation of a term of 
999 years by a tenant for life, overlooking in 
his fears the necessary condition “if he should 
so long live ;” for so surely as natural death 
will await the decay of the human frame, shall 
oblivion cover the “ trashy and meretricious” 
book, and leave room for successor after sue-* 
cessor to employ compositors, to sparkle and 
expire. But, the petitioners proceed—“Even 
suppose their success would be permanent, 
the present high profits derived by their au¬ 
thors are an ample return for the time em¬ 
ployed in their composition.” So these gen¬ 
tlemen, forgetting that the chief ground of the 
bill is, that the works on behalf of which its 
extension is sought often begin to repay their 
authors only when the copyright is about to 
expire, think themselves competent to estimate 
the anxieties, the heart-aches, the feverish 
hopes, the bitter disappointments, the frequent 
failures, the cheerless toils, with which an au¬ 
thor’s time is filled, and which disturb them 
little when they are arranging his words. 
They proceed—“ while it is proved, that books 
of deep research and intrinsic value wmuld 
not be rendered more valuable by an extension 
of the law of copyright, however extended 
that law might be.” How not more valuable 1 
Not much more valuable to sell, perhaps, but 
more valuable to preserve; else, if there is no 
gain to the author, where is the loss to the 
public 1 After a round assertion, “ that the 
bill must be viewed as one injuriously affect¬ 
ing the booksellers, book-binders, paper-ma¬ 
kers, type-founders, and all branches con¬ 
nected with the printing business,” they then 
proceed to extol their own profession :—“ That 
the profits derived from a book depend not on 
the art of writing, but on the art of printing; 
for that, without the facilities which improved 
mechanical improvements afford, the number 
of copies would be few and high-priced, and 
the profits of the author lower ; and, therefore, 
it is unjust that authors should endeavour to 
injure by exclusive laws a profession to which 
they are indebted for the rank they hold and 
the wealth they possess.” Surely the old critic 
Dennis, who, when he heard the thunder roll 
over the mimic scenes, and used to claim it as 
his own, was reasonable, compared to these 
gentlemen of the Mechanics’ Institute. What¬ 
ever may be the benefit w r hich the art of print¬ 
ing has conferred on genius—genius which 
had achieved imperishable triumphs long be¬ 
fore its discovery, it is astounding to hear this 
claim made by those who are now engaged in 
a simple mechanical pursuit. The manufac¬ 
turer of bayonets or of gunpowder might as 
well insist that he, and not the conqueror of 
Waterloo, should be the recipient of national 
gratitude. Where would their profession be 
if no author had written 1 There are some 
things more precious even than knowledge; 
and, strange as it may seem to the utilitarian 
philosophers, I venture to think gratitude one; 
and if it is, I would ask these petitioners to 
consider how many presses have been em¬ 
ployed and honoured, how many families in 
their own class have been enriched by the un¬ 


ceasing labours of a single mind—that of Sir 
Walter Scott—exhausted, fading, glimmering, 
perishing from this world in their service ! 

As the concluding paragraph of this peti 
tion merely repeats an analogy of literary 
works to mechanical inventions, which I have 
grappled with before, and which, if necessary, 
I am ready to expose again, I wbll pass from it 
and from the petitions against this bill—which, 
I assert, do not present a single fact for the infor¬ 
mation of the House—to the petitions which dis¬ 
close the grievances and the claims of authors. 
And first, to show, by way of example, how in¬ 
sufficient the present term is to remunerate au¬ 
thors who contemplate works of great labour 
and research, I will refer to the petition of Mr. 
Archibald Alison, sheriff 1 of the county of Lan¬ 
ark. This gentleman, son of the venerable 
author of the celebrated “Essay on Taste,” 
was brought up to the Scottish bar, and being 
gifted with excellent talents, and above all 
with that most valuable of talents, unwearied 
industry, enjoyed the fairest prospects of suc¬ 
cess. Having, however, conceived the design 
of w r riting the history of Europe during the 
French Revolution, he resigned those hopes 
for the office of Sheriff of Lanarkshire, which, 
limiting his income to a moderate sum, left 
him at leisure to pursue his scheme. On that 
work he has now been engaged for twenty-five 
years. To collect materials for its composition 
he has repeatedly visited the principal cities 
of Europe, and his actual expenditure in books 
and journeys to lay the foundations of his 
work has already exceeded 2,0007., and wiL 
be doubled if he should live to complete it. 
Seven volumes have successively appeared; 
the copyright is unassigned; and as the work 
is making a regular progress, fourteen years 
must elapse before the pecuniary outlay will 
be repaid. At the expiration of twenty-eight 
years, supposing the work to succeed on an 
average calculated on its present sale, its 
author will only obtain half what he might 
have acquired by the devotion of the same 
time to ephemeral productions; so that, unless 
his life should be prolonged beyond the ordi¬ 
nary lot of man, its labours to his family will 
be almost in vain, unless you considerably 
extend the term of his property; and then, in 
return for his sacrifices, he will leave them a 
substantial inheritance. Of a similar nature 
is the case of another petitioner, Dr. Cook, 
Professor of Moral Philosophy in the Univer¬ 
sity of St. Andrew’s, author of the “ History of 
the Reformation in Scotland,” a “History of 
the Church of Scotland,” and of other historical 
works which are now standard authorities, and 
on the composition of which he has been en¬ 
gaged for the last thirty years. In their com¬ 
position he has incurred great expense. The 
copyrights are vested in himself; but it de¬ 
pends on your decision whether his family 
shall derive any advantages from them. He 
concludes—“ considering this law as at vari¬ 
ance with the essential principles of justice, 
and calculated to impede the course of litera¬ 
ture and science,” by earnestly imploring the 
House to “ pass this bill for so extending the 
term of copyright as will secure the interest 
of the authors of extensive and laborious 

P 2 



174 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


works without in the slightest degree interfer¬ 
ing with the public good.” Dr. James Thom¬ 
son, the Professor of Mathematics in the Uni¬ 
versity of Glasgow, states the nature and 
history of several elementary works, the pro¬ 
ducts of his labour, which are slowly beginning 
to recompense him, and especially invites 
attention to the manner in which the law bears 
on works used as text-books in schools and 
universities, having to contend against the 
partialities of teachers for books with which 
use has made them familiar, and of booksellers 
for works in which they are interested, and 
which may only begin to obtain attention 
when the copyright is about to cease. Sir 
David Brewster has spent a most laborious 
and most useful life, and still spends it, in the 
composition of works which at once instruct 
and charm, and which can only remunerate 
him by the extension of the term. Now, I ask, 
is there no property in these petitioners worthy 
of protection ? “ No,” said, and will say, some 

of the opponents of this bill; “none. We 
think that from the moment an author puts his 
thoughts on paper and delivers them to the 
world, his property therein wholly ceases.” 
What! has he invested no capital? embarked 
no fortune? If human life is nothing in your 
commercial tables—if the sacrifice of profes¬ 
sion, of health, of gain, is nothing—surely the 
mere outlay of him who has perilled his fortune 
to instruct mankind may claim some regard! 
Or is the interest itself so refined—so ethereal 
—that you cannot regard it as property, because 
it is not palpable to sense as to feeling? Is 
there any justice in this? If so, why do you 
protect moral character as a man’s most pre¬ 
cious possession, and compensate the party 
who suffers unjustly in that character by 
damages? Has this possession any existence 
half so palpable as the author’s right in the 
printed creation of his brain? I have always 
thought it one of the proudest triumphs of 
human law that it is able to recognise and to 
guard this breath and finer spirit of moral 
action—that it can lend its aid in sheltering 
that invisible property which exists solely in 
the admiration and affection of others; and if 
it may do this, why may it not protect his in¬ 
terest in those living words which, as well 
observed by that great thinker, Mr. Hazlitt, are, 
“ after all, the only things which last for 
ever ?” 

From these examples of works of labour and 
pecuniary outlay, I turn to that of a poet, whose 
name has often been mentioned in the discus¬ 
sion of this measure, who has supported it by 
his published opinion, but who has now, for 
the first time, enforced it by petition. Mr. 
Wordsworth states that he is on the point of 
attaining his seventieth year; that forty-six 
years ago he published his first work, and that 
he has continued to publish original works at 
various intervals down to 1835. The copy¬ 
right in a considerable part of these works is 
now contingent on his life; in a few years the 
far larger portion of them will be holden by 
the same tenure ; and his most extensive and 
elaborate work, “ The Excursion,” will be in 
this condition, if he should be spared for four 
years longer. He represents that “having 


engaged and persevered in literary labours 
less with the expectation of producing speedy 
effect than with a view to interest and benefit 
mankind remotely, though permanently, his 
works, though never out of demand, have made 
their way slowly into general circulation;” 
and he states as a fact, directly bearing on this 
question, that his works have, within the last 
four years, brought a larger emolument than 
in all preceding years; which would now be 
bounded by his death ; and the greater part of 
which, if he had died four years ago, would 
have been wholly lost to his family. How will 
this case be answered? I suppose, as I have 
heard it, when less fully stated, answered 
before, that it proves that there is no necessity 
for the extension of copyright, because without 
its encouragement a poet thus gifted has been 
ready to devote his powers amidst neglect and 
scorn to the highest and the purest aims. I 
will not answer by merely reminding those who 
urge this ungenerous argument, that there may 
not always be attendant on such rare endow¬ 
ments the means of offering such a sacrifice, 
either from independent resources or from 
simple tastes. I reply at once, that the argu¬ 
ment is at utter variance with the plainest 
rules of morality and justice. I should like to 
hear how it would be received on a motion for 
a national grant to one who had fought his 
country’s battles! I should like to hear the 
indignation and the scorn which would be ex¬ 
pressed towards any one who should venture 
to suggest that the impulses which had led to 
heroic deeds had no respect to worldly benefits; 
that the love of country and glory would 
always lead to similar actions; and that, there¬ 
fore, out of regard to the public, we ought to 
withhold all reward from the conqueror. And 
yet the case of the poet is the stronger; for we 
do not propose to reward him out of any fund 
but that which he himself creates—from any 
pockets but from those of every one whom he 
individually blesses—and our reward cannot 
be misapplied when we take Time for our 
Arbitrator and Posterity for our Witnesses! 

It cannot have escaped the attention of the 
house thafr many of the petitioners are profes¬ 
sors in the universities of Scotland; and from 
the laborious nature of their pursuits—their 
love of literature, fostered at a distance from 
the applause of the capital, and from the inde¬ 
pendence and the purity of their character, I 
venture to think that their experience and their 
judgments are entitled to peculiar weight. 
Now, the University of St. Andrew’s, after 
powerfully urging the claims of authors gene¬ 
rally, thus submits the peculiar claims of their 
countrymen:—“Your petitioners venture to 
submit, that in Scotland, where the few rewards 
which used to be conferred on clergymen of 
literary and scientific merit have been with¬ 
drawn, and where the incomes of the profes¬ 
sors in her universities have been allowed to 
suffer great diminution, these individuals have 
strong motives to solicit, and additional 
grounds to expect, that their literary rights 
may be extended, and rendered as beneficial 
as possible to themselves and their families.” 
Among these professors, and among the peti 
tioners for this bill, is a clergyman unsurpassed 




SPEECHES ON THE LAW OF COPYRIGHT. 


175 


in Christian eloquence, in reach of thought, in 
unwearied zeal; who has disregarded ease and 
intellectual delights prodigally to expend his 
energies on that which he regards as the sacred 
cause of the church and religion of his coun¬ 
try ; and who depends on his copyrights, in 
such of the labours of his mind as he has com¬ 
mitted to the press, to make amends for a pro¬ 
fessional income far below his great intellec¬ 
tual claims. In addressing me on the subject 
of this bill, Dr. Chalmers says, “My profes¬ 
sional income has always been so scanty, that 
I should have been in great difficulties, had it 
not been for my authorship; and I am not 
aware of a more desirable compensation for 
the meagre emoluments of the offices I have 
held, than that those profits should be secured 
and perpetuated in favour of my descendants.” 
And who among us, not only of those who 
sympathize with his splendid exertions on 
behalf of the church of Scotland, but of all who 
feel grateful for the efforts by which he has 
illustrated and defended our common faith, 
will not desire that wish to be fulfilled 1 How 
one of the publishers of his country feels 
towards such authors may be seen in the pe¬ 
tition of Mr. Smith, of Glasgow, who even de¬ 
sires to limit the power of assigning copyright 
to twenty-one years, and then contrasts his 
case with that of those by whose creations he 
has been enriched. He states, “that he has 
obtained estate and competence by the sale of 
books published or sold by him, which pro¬ 
perty he has a right to entail or give in legacy 
for the benefit of his heirs; while the authors 
who have produced the -works that have en¬ 
riched him have no interest for their heirs by 
the present law of copyright in the property 
which they have solely constituted.” When 
I find these petitions signed by the most dis¬ 
tinguished ornament of the Scotch church, Dr. 
Chalmers—and by one of the most eminent 
among the Dissenting divines, Dr. Wardlaw, I 
cannot help associating with them a case 
which came under my notice a few days ago, 
on an application to me to assist a great- 
grandson of Dr. Doddridge, in presenting a 
memorial to the bounty of the crown. Here 
was the descendant of one of the idols of the 
religious world, whose works have circulated 
in hundreds of thousands of copies, enduring 
a state of unmerited privation and suffering, 
from which a trifle on each volume of his an¬ 
cestor’s works now adorning the libraries of 
the wealthy Dissenters would amply relieve 
him! 

On these contrasted cases the House has now 
to decide. But before I leave the question in 
its hands, it is fit I should advert for a moment 
to those opponents of the bill who, disclaiming 
the publishers and printers, appear on behalf 
of -what they call the public, and who insist 
that it is our duty to obtain for that public the 
-works of genius and labour at the lowest pos¬ 
sible price. Now, passing over a doubt, which 
I dare scarcely hint in their presence, whether 
the diffusion of cheap copies of any work ne¬ 
cessarily implies in an equal degree the diffu¬ 
sion of its beauties or the veneration of its 
injunctions, permit me to ask whether even for 
the public it is not desirable that works should 


be correct as well as cheap, and that it should 
have the benefit of the matured judgment of 
its instructors ? Now, this can only be effected 
by permitting the family of the author to watch 
over his fame. An author who, in a life de¬ 
voted to literature, has combined gifts of the 
historian and the poet—Mr. Southey—who has 
thought the statement of his case might have 
more effect than a petition, has permitted me 
to elucidate this view of the case by his ex¬ 
ample. He has lately published a complete 
edition of his poems, correcting the blemishes 
which during many years have presented 
themselves to his severer judgment; his copy¬ 
rights in many of the original poems will 
expire with his life; in the corrected edition 
his family will enjoy an interest, but in the 
original poems they will retain none; arid it 
will be in the power of Mr. Tegg, or any other 
of those worthy benefactors of the public who 
keep duteous watch over the deathbed of copy¬ 
rights, to republish any of those poems with 
all their repented errors, and the addition of 
those gross blunders which are always intro¬ 
duced when a reprint undergoes no revision 
but that of a printer. But is it even certain 
that the books thus carelessly printed will be 
actually cheaper in price than if the descend¬ 
ants of the author published them for their own 
advantage? It is not fair to judge of this by 
recent instances, produced in the first eager¬ 
ness of the freebooters of the trade to seize on 
and parade their spoils. It should be recol¬ 
lected that a proprietor who uses only one ma¬ 
chine for publication may, with profit to him¬ 
self, supply the market more cheaply than 
numbers who have separate expenses, and 
look for separate gains. But if the argument 
be doubtful, the fact at least is clear, and I 
may call the honourable member for Finsbury 
as my witness to prove it; for he has shown 
in this House, to the offence of none, but the 
amusement of all, and to the proof of my case, 
how cheaply books charged with an expensive 
copyright may be obtained of his friend Mr. 
Tegg, who, he states, nevertheless, has a stock 
worth more than 170,000/., which, if the prin¬ 
ciples of my opponents be fairly applied, is 
justly distributable among their favourite and 
much injured public. But grant the whole 
assumption—grant that if copyright be ex¬ 
tended, the few books it will affect will be 
dearer to the public by the little the author will 
gain by each copy—grant that they will not be 
more correct or authentic than when issued 
wholesale from the press; still is there nothing 
good for the people but cheap knowledge ? Is 
it necessary to associate with their introduc¬ 
tion to the works of the mighty dead the selfish 
thought that they are sharing in the riot of the 
grave, instead of cherishing a sense of pride 
that, while they read, they are assisting to de¬ 
prive the grave of part of its withering power 
over the interests of survivors? But if it were 
desirable, is it possible to separate a personal 
sympathy with an author from the first admi¬ 
ration of his works? We do not enter into his 
labours as into some strange and dreamy 
world, raised by the touch of a forgotten en¬ 
chanter; the affections are breathing around 
us, and the author being dead, yet speaks in 


i 



176 


TALFOURD’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


accents triumphant over death and time. As 
from the dead level of an utilitarian philosophy 
no mighty work of genius ever issued, so 
never can such a work be enjoyed except in 
that happy forgetfulness of its doctrines, which 
always softens the harshest creed. But I be¬ 
lieve that those who thus plead for the people 
are wholly unauthorized by the feelings of the 
people; that the poor of these realms are richer 
in spirit than their advocates understand 
them; and that they would feel a pride in 
bestowing their contributions in the expression 
of respect to that great intellectual ancestry 
whose fame is as much theirs as it is the boast 
of the loftiest amongst us. I do not believe 
that the people of Scotland share in the exulta¬ 
tion of the publishers who have successively 
sent among them cheap editions of the “ Lay 
of the Last Minstrel,” “Marmion,” and the 
“Lady of the Lake;” that they can buy them 
at a lower price than if the great minstrel who 
produced them were still among the living. I 
cannot believe that they can so soon forget 
their obligations to one who has given their 
beautiful country a place in the imagination 
of mankind which may well compensate for 
the loss of that political individuality they so 
long and so proudly enjoyed, as to count with 
satisfaction the pence they may save by that 
premature death which gave his copyrights to 
contesting publishers, and left his halls silent 
and cold. It is too late to do justice to Burns ; 
but I cannot believe the peasant who should 
be inspired by him to walk “ in glory and in 
joy, following his plough by the mountain side,” 
or who, casting his prideful look, on Saturday 
evening, around his circle of children, feels 
his pleasure heightened and reduplicated in 
the poet’s mirror, would regret to think that 
the well-thumbed volume which had made 
him conscious of such riches had paid the 
charge of some sixpence towards the support 
of that poet’s children. 

There is only one other consideration I would 
suggest before I sit down, which relates not to 
any class, but to the community and our du¬ 
ties towards them. It is thus expressed in Mr. 
Wordsworth’s petition :—“ That this bill has 


for its main object to relieve men of letters from 
the thraldom of being forced to court the living 
generation to aid them in rising above slavish 
taste and degraded prejudice, and to encourage 
them to rely on their own impulses.” Surely 
this is an object worthy of the legislature of a 
great people, especially in an age where rest¬ 
less activity and increasing knowledge present 
temptations to the slight and the superficial 
which do not exist in a ruder age. Let those 
who “ to beguile the time look like the time,” 
have their fair scope—let cheap and innocent 
publications be multiplied as much as you 
please,—still the character of the age demands 
something impressed with a nobler labour, and 
directed to a higher aim. “ The immortal 
mind craves objects that endure.” Thejprinters 
need not fear. There will not be too many can¬ 
didates for “a bright reversion,” which only 
falls in when the ear shall be deaf to human 
praise. I have been accused of asking you to 
legislate “ on some sort of sentimental feeling.” 
I deny the charge : the living truth is with us ; 
the spectral phantoms of depopulated printing- 
houses and shops are the baseless fancies of 
our opponents. If I were here beseeching in¬ 
dulgence for the frailties and excesses which 
sometimes attend fine talents—if I weie here 
appealing to your sympathy on behalf of crush¬ 
ed hopes and irregular aspirations, the accusa¬ 
tion would be just. I plead not for the wild, 
but for the sage ; not for the perishing, but for 
the eternal: for him who, poet, philosopher, or 
historian, girds himself for some toil lasting as 
life—lays aside all frivolous pursuits for one 
virtuous purpose—that when encouraged by 
the distant hope of that “ All-hail hereafter,” 
which shall welcome him among the heirs of 
fame, he may not shudder to think of it as 
sounding with hollow mockery in the ears of 
those whom he loves, and waking sullen echoes 
by the side of a cheerless hearth. For such I 
ask this boon, and through them for mankind 
—and I ask it in the confidence with the ex¬ 
pression of which your veteran petitioner 
Wordsworth closed his appeal to you—“ That 
in this, as in all other cases, justice is capable 
of working out its own expediency!” 


THE WESTMINSTER PLAY. 

December, 1845. 

Not from the youth-illumined stage alone 

Is gladness shed; it breathes around from all 
Whose names, imprinted on each honour’d wall, 
Speak deathless boyhood ; on whose hearts the tone, 
Which makes each ancient phrase familiar grown 
New by its crisp expression, seems to fall 
A strain from distant years ; while striplings, still 
In careless prime, bid younger bosoms thrill 
With plaudits such as lately charm’d their own— 
While richest humour strangely serves to fill 

Worn eyes with childlike tears ; for Memory lifts 
Time’s curtain from the spirits’ holiest stage, 

And makes even strangers share the precious gifts 
Which clasp in golden meshes Youth and Age. 


THE END. 




CRITICAL 


AND 


MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS. 


BY 


JAMES STEPHEN. 


IN ONE VOLUME. 


BOSTON: 

PHILLIPS, SAMPSON, AND COMPANY. 
NEW YORK: J. C. DERBY. 

1 8 5 4 . 








4 




\ 

* 

« 





















• • 






CONTENTS. 


^ Page 

LIFE OF WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 5 

THE LIVES OF WHITFIELD AND FROUDE.-... 22 

D’AUBIGNE’S HISTORY OF THE GREAT REFORMATION —. 39 

LIFE AND TIMES OF RICHARD BAXTER—. 59 

s 

PHYSICAL THEORY OF ANOTHER LIFE..-.. 79 

THE PORT-ROYALISTS............ *■ • — . 9 S 

IGNATIUS LOYOLA AND HIS ASSOCIATES —.•.. • 

TAYLOR’S EDWIN THE FAIR —. 14* 




























































































































STEPHEN’S MISCELLANIES. 


LIFE OF WILLIAM WILBERFORCE BY HIS SONS.* 


[Edinburgh Review, 1838 .] 


These volumes record the Life of a man, 
who, in an age fertile beyond most others in 
illustrious characters, reached, by-paths till 
then unexplored, an eminence never before 
attained by any private member of the British 
Parliament. We believe we shall render an 
acceptable service to our readers, by placing 
them in possession of a general outline of 
this biography. 

William Wilberforce was born at Hull on 
the 24th of August, 1759. His father, a mer¬ 
chant of that town, traced his descent from a 
family which had for many generations pos¬ 
sessed a large estate at Wilberfoss, in the East 
Riding of the county of York. From that 
place was derived the name which the taste, 
or caprice of his later progenitors, modulated 
into the form in which it was borne by their 
celebrated descendant. His mother was nearly 
allied to many persons of consideration; 
amongst whom are numbered the present 
Bishops of Winchester and Chester, and the 
members of the great London banking-house, 
of which Lord Carrington was the head. 

The father of William Wilberforce died be¬ 
fore his son had completed his tenlh year; 
and the ample patrimony which he then inhe¬ 
rited was afterwards largely increased on the 
death of a paternal uncle, to whose guardian¬ 
ship his child was committed. By that kins¬ 
man he was placed at a school in the imme¬ 
diate neighbourhood of his own residence at 
Wimbledon, in Surry. The following are the 
characteristic terms in which, at the distance 
of many years, the pupil recorded his recollec¬ 
tions of this first stage of his literary educa¬ 
tion :—“ Mr. Chalmers, the master, himself a 
Scotchman, had an usher of the same nation, 
whose red beard, for he scarcely shaved once 
a month, I shall never forget. They taught 
French, Arithmetic, and Latin. With Greek 
we did not much meddle. It was frequented 
chiefly by the sons of merchants, and they 
taught therefore every thing, and nothing. 
Here I continued some time as a parlour 


* Life of William Wilberforce. By his sons Robert 
Isaac Wilberforce. M. A., Vicar of East Furlough, 
late Fellow of the Oriel College ; and Samuel Wilber¬ 
force, M. A., Rector of Brightstone. 4 vols. 8vo. Lon¬ 
don, 1838. 


boarder. I was sent at first among the lodgers, 
and I can remember, even now, the nauseous 
food with which we were supplied, and which 
I could not eat without sickness.” 

His early years were not, however, to pass 
away without some impressions more import¬ 
ant, if not more abiding, than those which had 
been left on his sensitive nerves by the'red 
beard of one of his Scotch teachers, and by 
the ill savour of the dinners of the other. His 
uncle’s wife was a disciple of George Whit¬ 
field, and under her pious care he acquired a 
familiarity with the Sacred Writings, and a 
habit of devotion of which the results were 
perceptible throughout the whole of his more 
mature life. While still a school-boy, he had 
written several religious letters, “ much in 
accordance with the opinions which he subse¬ 
quently adopted,” and which, but for his pe¬ 
remptory interdict, the zeal of some indiscreet 
friend would have given to the world. “ If I 
had stayed with my uncle, I should probably 
have been a bigoted despised Methodist,” is 
the conclusion which Mr. Wilberforce formed 
on looking back to this period, after an inter¬ 
val of nearly thirty years. His mother’s fore¬ 
sight, apprehending this result, induced her to 
withdraw him from his uncle’s house, and to 
place him under the charge of the master of 
the endowed school at Pocklington, in York¬ 
shire,—a sound and well-beneficed divine, 
whose orthodoxy would seem to have been 
entirely unalloyed by the rigours of Method¬ 
ism. The boy was encouraged to lead a life 
of idleness and pleasure, wasting his time in 
a round of visits to the neighbouring gentry, 
to whom he was recommended by his social 
talents, especially by his rare skill in singing; 
while, during his school vacations, the reli¬ 
gious impressions of his childhood were com¬ 
bated by a constant succession of such convi¬ 
vial gayeties as the town of Hull could afford. 
Ill as this discipline was calculated to lay the 
foundation of good intellectual habits, it was 
still less adapted to substitute for the excite¬ 
ment and dogmatism of W^hitfield’s system, a 
piety resting on a nobler and more secure 
basis. One remarkable indication, however, 
was given of the character by which his future 
life was to be distinguished. He placed in the 
a 2 5 





6 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


hands of a schoolfellow, (who survives to re¬ 
cord the fact,) a letter to he conveyed*to the 
editor of the York paper, which he stated to be 
“ in condemnation of the odious traffic in 
human flesh.”—On the same authority he is 
reported to have “greatly excelled all the 
other boys in his compositions, though seldom 
beginning them till the eleventh hour.” 

From school Mr. Wilberforce was transferred, 
at the age of seventeen, to St. John’s College, 
Cambridge. We trust that the picture which 
he has drawn of the education of a young gen¬ 
tleman of fortune, in an English University, 
towards the close of the last century, will 
seem an incredible fiction to the present mem¬ 
bers of that learned society. “The Fellows 
of the College,” he says, “ did not act towards 
me the part of Christians, or even of honest 
men. Their object seemed to be to make and 
keep me idle. If ever I appeared studious, 
they would say to me—‘Why, in the world 
should a man of your fortune trouble himself 
with fagging?’ I was a good classic, and 
acquitted myself well in the College examina¬ 
tions, but mathematics, which my mind greatly 
needed, I almost entirely neglected, and was 
told that I was too clever to require them.” 

With such a preparation for the duties of 
active life, Mr. Wilberforce passed at a single 
step from the University to the House of 
Commons. The general election of 17S0, oc¬ 
curring within less than a month from the 
completion of his twenty-first year, “the affec¬ 
tion of his townsmen, ‘not unaided by’ an 
expenditure of from eight to nine thousand 
pounds,” placed him at the head of the poll 
for “ the town and county of Hull.” Although 
at this time Mr. Wilberforce states himself to 
have been “so ignorant of general society as 
to have come up to London stored with argu¬ 
ments to prove the authenticity of Rowley’s 
Poems,” yet so rich and so accomplished an 
aspirant could not long be excluded from the 
mysteries of the world of fashion which now 
burst upon him. Five clubs enrolled him 
among their members. He “chatted, played 
at cards, or gambled” with Kox, Sheridan, and 
Fitzpatrick—fascinated the Prince of Wales 
by his singing at Devonshire House—pro¬ 
duced inimitable imitations of Lord North’s 
voice and manner—sang catches with Lord 
Sandwich—exchanged epigrams with Mrs. 
Creeve—partook of a Shaksperian dinner at 
the Boar, in East Cheap—“shirked the Du¬ 
chess of Gordon”—and danced till five in the 
morning at Almack’s. The lassitude of fash¬ 
ionable life was effectually relieved by the 
duties or amusements of a Parliamentary ca¬ 
reer, not unattended by some brilliant success. 
Too rich to look to .public service as a means 
of subsistence, and, at this period, ambitious 
rather of distinction than of eminence, Mr. 
Wilberforce enjoyed the rare luxury of com¬ 
plete independence. Though a decided oppo¬ 
nent of the North American war, he voted 
with Lord North against Sir Fletcher Norton’s 
re-election as Speaker, and opposed Mr. Pitt 
on the second occasion of his addressing the 
House, although he was already numbered 
amongst the most intimate of his friends. 
This alliance, commenced apparently at the 


University, had ripened into an affectionate 
union which none of the vicissitudes of poli¬ 
tical life could afterwards dissolve. They 
partook in each other’s labours and amuse¬ 
ments, and the zest with which Mr. Pitt in¬ 
dulged in these relaxations, throws a new and 
unexpected light on his character. They 
joined together in founding a club, at which, 
for two successive winters, Pitt spent his 
evenings, while, at Mr. Wilberforce’s villa at 
Wimbledon, he was established rather as an 
inmate than as a guest. There he indulged 
himself even in boisterous gayety; and it 
strangely disturbs our associations to read of 
the son and rival of Lord # Chatham rising 
early in the morning to sow the flower-beds i 
with the fragments of a dress-hat with which- 
Lord Harrowby had come down from the 
opera. There also were arranged fishing and 
shooting parties; in one of which the future 
champion of the anti-Gallican war narrowly 
escaped an untimely grave from the misdi¬ 
rected gun of his friend. On the banks of 
Windermere, also, Mr. Wilberforce possessed 
a residence, where the Parliamentary vaca¬ 
tion found him “ surrounded with a goodly 
assortment of books.” But the discovery was 
already made that the actumnal ennui of the 
fashionable world might find relief among the 
lakes and. mountains of Westmoreland, and 
“ boating, riding, and continual parties” fully 
occupied the time which had been devoted to 
retirement and study. From these amici fures 
iemporis Mr. Wilberforce escaped, in the au¬ 
tumn of 1783, to pass a few -weeks with Mr. 
Pitt in France. They readily found introduc¬ 
tions to the supper table of Marie Antoinette, 
and the other festivities of Fontainbleau. Louis 
XVI. does not appear' to have made a very 
flattering impression on his young guests. 
“The King,” says Mr. Wilberforce, in a letter 
written about that time, “ is so strange a being 
of the hog kind, that it is worth going a hun¬ 
dred miles for a sight of him, especially a 
boar-hunting.” At Paris “he received with 
interest the hearty greetings -which Dr. Frank¬ 
lin tendered to a rising member of the English 
Parliament, who had opposed the American 
war.” 

Graver cares awaited Mr. Wilberforce’s re¬ 
turn to England. He arrived in time to second 
Mr. Pitt’s opposition to the India Bill, and to 
support him in his memorable struggle against 
the majority of the House of Commons. The 
Coalition was now the one subject of popular 
invective; and, at a public meeting in the 
Castle-jmrd at York, in March, 1784, Mr. Wil¬ 
berforce condemned their measures, in a speech 
which was received with the loudest applause. 
The praise of James Boswell is characteristic 
at once of the speaker and of the critic. In an 
account of the scene which he transmitted to 
Mr. Dundas, “I saw,” writes Boswell, “what 
seemed a mere shrimp, mount upon the table, 
but, as I listened, he grew and grew, until the 
shrimp became a whale.” A still more con¬ 
vincing attestation to his eloquence is to be 
found in the consequences to which it led. Mr. 
Wilberforce attended the meeting with the 
avowed purpose of defeating, at the approach-, 
ing election, the predominant influence of the 




LIFE OF WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 


great Whig families of Yorkshire, and with 
the secret design of becoming a candidate for 
the count}'. During his speech the cry of 
“ Wiiberforce and Liberty” was raised by the 
crowd; and the transition was obvious and 
readily made, to “ Wiiberforce and the Repre¬ 
sentation of Yorkshire.” The current of popu¬ 
lar favour flowed strongly in his support. He 
was the opponent of the Coalition and the 
India Bill, and the friend and zealous partisan 
of Mr. Pitt; then rich in hereditary honours, 
in personal renown, and in the brightest pro¬ 
mise. Large subscriptions defrayed the expense 
of the contest, and, without venturing to the 
poll, his Whig opponents surrendered to him 
a seat, which he continued to occupy, without 
intermission, for many successive Parliaments. 
With this memorable triumph Mr. Wiiberforce 
closed his twenty-fifth year, and returned to 
/ London in possession of whatever could gratify 
the wishes, or exalt the hopes of a candidate 
for fame, on the noblest theatre of civil action 
which the world had thrown open to the ambi¬ 
tion of private men. 

The time had, however, arrived at which a 
new direction was to be given to the thoughts 
and pursuits of this favourite of nature and 
fortune. Before taking his seat in the House 
of Commons, as member for the county of 
York, Mr. Wiiberforce, accompanied by some 
female relations, and by Isaac Milner, the late 
Dean of Carlisle, undertook a journey to the 
south of France, and thence through Switzer¬ 
land to the German Spa. This expedition, in¬ 
terrupted by a temporary return to England, 
during the winter of 1784—5, continued some 
months, and forms a memorable era in his life. 
The lessons which he had learned in childhood 
at Wimbledon had left an indelible impression 
t^/bn a mind peculiarly susceptible of every 
tender and profound emotion. The dissipa¬ 
tion of his subsequent days had retarded the 
growth of those seeds of early piety, but had 
not entirely choked them. To the companions 
of his youth many indications had occasionally 
been given, that their gay associate was re¬ 
volving deeper thoughts than formed the staple 
of their ordinary social intercourse. These 
w r ere now to take entire possession of his mind, 
and to regulate the whole of his future conduct. 
Tha opinions of Whitfield had found a more 
impressive expositor than the good aunt who 
had originally explained and enforced them. 

Isaac Milner was a remarkable man, and 
but for the early possession of three great ec¬ 
clesiastical sinecures, which enabled him to 
gratify his constitutional indolence, would pro¬ 
bably have attained considerable distinction in 
physical and in theological science. In a narrow 
collegiate circle he exercised a colloquial des¬ 
potism akin to that'which Johnson had esta¬ 
blished, and to which Parr aspired, amongst 
the men of letters and the statesmen of their 
age. But Milner’s dogmatism was relieved by 
a tenderness of heart not inferior to that of the 
great fnoralist himself; and was informed by 
a theology incomparably more profound, and 
more fitted to practical uses, than that of the 
^doubted grammarian. He was amongst the 
dearest of the friends of Mr. Wiiberforce, and 


now became his preceptor and his spiritual 
guide. 

I he day dreams on the subject of religious 
conversions, which they who list may hear on 
every side, are like other dreams, the types of 
substantial realities. Though the workings of 
the Almighty hand are distinctly visible °only 
to the omniscient eye, yet even our narrow 
faculties can often trace the movements of that 
perennial under-current which controls the se¬ 
quences of human life, and imparts to them 
the character of moral discipline. In the com¬ 
prehensive scheme of the Supreme Governor 
of the world for the progressive advancement 
of the human race, are comprised innumerable 
subordinate plans for the improvement of the 
individuals of which it is composed; and whe¬ 
ther we conceive of these as the result of some 
preordained system, or as produced by the im- 
'inediate interposition of God, we equally ac¬ 
knowledge the doctrine of Divine Providence, 
land refer to him as the author of those salutary 
revolutions of human character, of which the 
reality is beyond dispute. It is a simple matter 
of fact, of which these volumes afford the most 
conclusive proof, that, about the twenty-sixth 
year of his age, Mr. Wiiberforce was the sub¬ 
ject of such a change; and that it continued 
for half a century to give an altered direction 
to his whole system of thought and action. 
Waiving all discussion as to the mode in 
which the divine agency may have been em¬ 
ployed to accomplish this result, it is more to 
our purpose to inquire in what the change 
really consisted, and what were the conse¬ 
quences for which it prepared the way. 

The basis of Mr. Wilberforce’s natural cha¬ 
racter was, an intense fellow-feeling with other 
men. No one more readily adopted the inter¬ 
ests, sympathized with the affections, or caught 
even the transient emotions of those with 
whormhe associated. United to a melancholy 
temperament, this disposition would have pro¬ 
duced a moon-struck and sentimental “Man of 
Feeling;” but, connected as it was with the 
most mercurial gayety of heart, the effect was 
as exhilarating as it was impressive. It was a 
combination of the deep emotions, real or pre¬ 
tended, of Rousseau, with the restless vivacity 
of Voltaire. Ever ready to weep with those 
that wept, his nature still more strongly 
prompted him to rejoice with those that re. 
joiced. A passionate lover of society, he 
might (to adopt, with some little qualification, 
a -well-known phrase) have passed for the 
brother of every man, and for the lover of 
every woman with whom he conversed. 
Bayard himself could not have accosted a 
damsel of the houses of Longueville or Coligni 
with a more heartfelt and graceful reverence, 
than marked his address to every female, how¬ 
ever homely or however humble. The most 
somnolent company was aroused and glad¬ 
dened at his presence. The heaviest counte¬ 
nance reflected some animation from his eye; 
nor was any one so dull as not to yield some 
sparks of intellect when brought into commu¬ 
nication with him. Few men ever loved books 
more, or read them with a more insatiate 
thirst; yet, even in the solitude of his library. 







8 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


the social spirit never deserted him. The one 
great object of his studies was, to explore the 
springs of human action, and to trace their in¬ 
fluence on the character and happiness of 
mankind. 

To this vivid sympathy in all human inter¬ 
ests and feelings were united the talents by 
which it could be most gracefully exhibited. 
Mr. Wilberforce possessed histrionic powers 
of the highest order. If any caprice of fortune 
had called him to the stage, he would have 
ranked amongst its highest ornaments. He 
would have been irresistible before a jury, and 
the most popular of preachers. His rich 
mellow voice, directed by an ear of singular 
accuracy, gave to his most familiar language 
a variety of cadence, and to his most serious 
discourse a depth of expression, which ren¬ 
dered it impossible not to listen. Pathos and 
drollery—solemn musings and playful fancies 
—yearnings of the soul over the tragic, and 
the most contagious mirth over the ludicrous 
events of life, all rapidly succeeding each other, 
and harmoniously because unconsciously 
blended, threw over his conversation a spell 
which no prejudice, dulness, or ill-humour 
could resist. The courtesy of the heart, and 
the refinement of the most polished society, 
united to great natural courage, and a not un¬ 
graceful consciousness of his many titles to 
respect, completed the charm which his pre¬ 
sence infallibly exercised. 

To these unrivalled social powers was added 
a not less remarkable susceptibility of enjoy¬ 
ment, in whatever form it presented itself. 
The pleasures, such as they are, of a very fas¬ 
tidious taste, he did not cultivate. If Haydn 
was not to be had, a street ballad would seem 
to shoot quicksilver through his frame. In the 
absence of Pitt or Canning, he would delight 
himself in the talk of the most matter of fact 
man of his constituents from the Cloth hall at 
Leeds. With a keen perception of beauty and 
excellence ir. Mature, literature, and art, the 
alchymy of his happy frame extracted some 
delight from the dullest pamphlet, the tamest 
scenery, and the heaviest speech. The curio¬ 
sity and the interest of childhood, instead of 
wearing out as he grew older, seemed to be 
continually on the increase. This peculiarity 
is noticed by Sir James Mackintosh, with his 
accustomed precision and delicacy of touch, 
in the following words :—“ Do you remember 
Madame de Maintenon’s exclamation, ‘ Oh the 
misery of having to amuse an old king!—qui 
n’est pas amusableP Now, if I was called 
upon to describe Wilberforce, I should say, he 
was the most ‘amusable’ man I ever met with 
in my life. Instead of having to think what 
subjects will interest him, it is perfectly im¬ 
possible to hit on one that does not interest 
him. I never saw any one who touched life at 
so many points; and it is the more remarkable 
in a man who is supposed to live absorbed in 
the contemplations of a future state. When he 
was in the House of Commons, he seemed to 
have the freshest mind of any man there. 
There was all the charm of youth about him; 
and he is quite as remarkable in this bright 
evening of his days as when I saw him in his 
glory many years ago.” 


Such a temperament, combined with such an 
education, might have given the assurance of 
a brilliant career, but hardly of any enduring 
fame. Ordinary foresight might have pre¬ 
dicted that he would be courted or feared by 
the two great parties in the House of Com¬ 
mons ; that he would be at once the idol and 
the idolator of society; and that he would 
shine in Parliament, and in the world, in the 
foremost rank of intellectual voluptuaries. But 
that he should rise to be amongst the most la¬ 
borious and eminent benefactors of mankind 
was beyond the divination of any human saga¬ 
city. It is to the mastery which religion ac¬ 
quired over his mind that this elevation is to 
be ascribed. 

It is not wonderful that many have claimed 
Mr. Wilberforce as the ornament of that parti¬ 
cular section of the Christian Church which 
has assumed or acquired the distinctive title 
of Evangelical; nor that they should resent as 
injurious to their party any more catholic view 
of his real character. That he became the 
secular head of this body is perfectly true; 
but no man was ever more exempt from 
bondage to any religious party. Immutably 
attached to the cardinal truths of revelation, 
he was in other respects a latitudinarian. 
“Strange,” he would say, “that Christians 
have taken as the badge of separation the 
very Sacrament which their Redeemer insti¬ 
tuted as the symbol of their union.” And in 
this spirit, though a strict conformist to the 
Church of England, he occasionally attended 
the public worship of those who dissent from 
her communion, and maintained a cordial 
fellowship with Christians of every denomina¬ 
tion. The opinion may, indeed, be hazarded 
that he was not profoundly learned in any 
branch of controversial theology, nor much 
qualified for success in such studies. His 
mind had been little trained to systematic in¬ 
vestigation either in moral or physical science. 
Though the practice of rhetoric was the busi¬ 
ness of his mature life, the study of logic had 
not been the occupation of his youth. Skepti¬ 
cism and suspended judgment were foreign to 
his mental habits. Perhaps no man ever ex¬ 
amined more anxiously the meaning of the 
sacred writings, and probably no one ever 
more readily admitted their authority. Finding 
in his own bosom ten thousand echoes to the 
doctrines and precepts of the Gospel, he wisely 
and gladly received this silent testimony to 
their truth, and gave them a reverential admis¬ 
sion. Instead of consuming life in a protracted 
scrutiny into the basis of his belief, he busied 
himself in erecting upon it a superstructure of 
piety and of virtue. In fact, his creed differed 
little, if at all, from that of the vast majority of 
Protestants. The difference between him and 
his feMow Christians consisted chiefly in the 
uses to which his religious opinions were ap¬ 
plied. The reflections which most men habi¬ 
tually avoid he as habitually cherished. It is 
scarcely an exaggeration to say of him that 
God was in all his thoughts. He surveyed 
human life as the eye of an artist ranges over 
a landscape, receiving innumerable intimations 
which escape any less practised observer. In 
every faculty he recognised a sacred trust; in 



LIFE OF WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 


9 


every material object of an indication of the 
divine wisdom and goodness; in every human 
being an heir of immortality; in every enjoy¬ 
ment a proof of the divine benignity; in every 
affliction an act of parental discipline. The 
early development of this habit of mind ap¬ 
pears to have been attended with much dejec¬ 
tion and protracted self-denial; but the gay and 
social spirit of the man gradually resumed its 
dominion. A piety so profound was never so 
entirely free from asceticism. It was allied to 
all the pursuits, and all the innocent pleasures 
of life,—we might almost say to all its blame¬ 
less whims and humours. The frolic of earlier 
days had indeed subsided, and the indestructible 
gayety of his heart had assumed a more gentle 
and cautious character. But with a settled 
peace of mind, and a self-government continu¬ 
ally gaining strength, he felt that perfect free¬ 
dom which enabled him to give the reins to his 
constitutional vivacity; and the most devo¬ 
tional of men was at the same time the most 
playful and exhilarating companion. His pre¬ 
sence was as fatal to dulness as to immorality. 
His mirth was as irresistible as the first laugh¬ 
ter of childhood. 

The sacred principles which he had now 
adopted were not sufficient entirely to cure 
those intellectual defects to which a neglected 
education and the too early enjoyment of wealth 
and leisure had given the force of inveterate 
habit. His conversation was remarkable for 
interminable digressions, and was rib inapt 
index of the desultory temper of his mind. 
But even this discursive temper was made 
subservient to the great objects of his life. It 
exhibited itself in the rapid transitions which he 
was continually making from one scheme of 
benevolence to another; and in that singular 
faculty which he possessed of living at once 
as the inhabitant of the visible and invisible 
worlds. From the shadows of earth to the 
realities of man’s future destiny he passed 
with a facility scarcely attainable to those who 
have been trained to more continuous habits 
of application. Between the oratory and the 
senate—devotional exercises and worldly pur¬ 
suits—he had formed so intimate a connexion, 
that the web of his discourse was not rarely 
composed of very incongruous materials. But 
this fusion, of religious with secular thoughts 
added to the spirit with which every duty was 
performed, and to the zest with which every 
enjoyment was welcomed; and if the ■want of 
good mental discipline was perceptible to the 
last, the triumph of Christianity was but the 
more conspicuous in that inflexible constancy 
of purpose with which he pursued the great 
works of benevolence to which his life was 
consecrated. No aspirant for the honours of 
literature, or for the dignities of the woolsack, 
ever displayed more decision of character than 
marked his labours for the abolition of the 
slave trade. 

Some notice, however brief, of that great 
event is indispensable in the most rapid survey 
of the life of Mr. Wilberforce. The aspirations 
of his school-boy days on this subject have 
been already noticed. That early impression 
was deep and abiding. At the commencement 
of his parliamentary career, in 17S0, his in¬ 


quiries into the system of colonial slavery had 
Jed him to conceive and to avow the hope that 
he should live to redress the wrongs of the 
Negro race. The direction of public opinion 
towards the accomplishment of great political 
objects is one of those social acts which, 
during the last half century, has almost as¬ 
sumed the character of a new invention. But 
the contrast between the magnitude of the de¬ 
sign, and the poverty of the resources at his 
command, might have justified many an 
anxious foreboding, while, during the follow¬ 
ing six years, Mr. Wilberforce concerted plans 
for the abolition of the slave trade with James 
Ramsey, the first confessor and proto-martyr 
of the new faith, with Ignatius Latrobe, the 
missionary, in his lodging in Fetter Lane, or 
even with Sir Charles and Lady Middleton, at 
their mansion in Kent. Allies of greater ap¬ 
parent importance were afterwards obtained ; 
and it was when seated with Mr. Pitt, “ in con¬ 
versation in the open air, at the root of an old 
tree at Holwood, just above the steep descent 
into the valley of Keston,” that Mr. Wilber¬ 
force resolved “ to give notice, on a fit occa¬ 
sion, in the House of Commons, of his inten¬ 
tion to bring the subject forward.” The expe¬ 
rience of the next twenty years was, however, 
to convince him that it was not from the elo¬ 
quent statesman who, for nearly the whole of 
that period, directed the government of this 
country, that effectual support must be drawn ; 
but from the persevering energy of men who, 
like Ramsey and Latrobe, could touch in the 
bosoms of others those sacred springs of action 
which were working in their own. Amongst 
such associates in this holy war are to be 
mentioned, with peculiar veneration, the 
names of Granville Sharpe and of Thomas 
Clarkson. To the former was committed the 
presidency of the society, charged with the 
duty of collecting and diffusing information; 
while Mr. Clarkson became the zealous and 
indefatigable agent of that body. To Mr. 
Wilberforce himself was assigned the general 
superintendence of the cause, both in and out 
of Parliament. 

In 1789, he first proposed the abolition of 
the slave trade to the House of Commons, in a 
speech which Burke rewarded with one of 
those imperishable eulogies which he alone 
had the skill and the authority to pronounce. 
But a victory over Guinea merchants was not 
to be numbered amongst the triumphs of elo¬ 
quence. Unable to withstand the current of 
popular feeling which the novelty as much 
as the nature of the proposal had stirred, they 
sagaciously resolved to await the subsidence 
of this unwonted enthusiasm; soliciting only 
a suspension of the measure until Parliament 
should be in possession of the facts which 
they undertook to substantiate. To this Fa 
bian policy, ever changing in its aspect, bui 
uniform in its design, the slave traders were 
indebted for the prolongation of their guilty 
commerce. Nearly two years were worn away 
in the examination of their own witnesses, 
and when Mr. Wilberforce had, with difficulty, 
succeeded in transferring the inquiry from the 
bar of the House of Commons to the less dila¬ 
tory tribunal of a select committee, he had to 



10 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


straggle laboriously for permission to produce 
testimony in refutation of the evidence of his 
antagonists. It was not, therefore, till April, 
1791, that the question was directly brought to 
issue; when a proof was given of the fore¬ 
sight with which the Guinea merchants had 
calculated on the gradual subsidence of the 
public indignation. Ominous were the fore¬ 
bodings with which the friends of Mr. Wilber- 
force looked forward to the approaching debate. 
By the master of St. John’s College, Cam¬ 
bridge, his position was compared to that of 
“ Episcopius in the infamous Synod of Dort;” 
while John Wesley exhorted him to proceed 
to the conflict as a new “ Athanasius contra 
miindum .” They had well divined the temper 
of the times. The slave traders triumphed by 
an overwhelming majority. In the political 
tumults of those days, the voice of humanity 
was no longer audible, and common sense 
had ceased to discharge its office. The bad 
faith and fickleness of the French govern¬ 
ment had involved St. Domingo in confusion 
and bloodshed; and because the elements of 
society had broken loose in that colony, it was 
judged dangerous to arrest the accumulation 
of the materials of similar discord within our 
own ! Even Mr. Pitt avowed his opinion that 
it was wise to await more tranquil times be¬ 
fore the slave trade should be abolished. It 
was in vain that Mr. Wilberforce urged on the 
House of Commons, in 1792, the true infe¬ 
rence from the calamitous state of St. Do¬ 
mingo. His measure for the immediate aboli¬ 
tion of the slave trade was again defeated. 
Those were days in which every change was ! 
branded as a revolution—when the most sacred ; 
rules of moral or political conduct, if adduced- 
in favour of any reform, were denounced and 
abhorred as “ French principles.” 

Reason, however, having gradually regained 
her dominion, the procrastinating system ofi 
the slave traders assumed a new shape, and 
obtained, in the person of Mr. Dundas, its most 
formidable advocate. With perverse inge¬ 
nuity, he proposed to substitute a gradual for 
an immediate abolition; fixing a remote period 
for the entire cessation of the trade. Yet even 
in this cautious form the bill found a cold 
reception in the House of Peers, where, after 
consuming the session in the examination of 
two witnesses, their lordships postponed the 
measure till the following year. With the 
arrival of that period, Mr. Wilberforce had 
to sustain three successive defeats. The 
House of Commons rejected first, the main 
proposal of an immediate abolition of the 
trade; then, a motion restricting the number 
of slaves to be annually imported into our 
colonies; and, finally, a plan for prohibiting 
the employment of British capital in the in¬ 
troduction of slaves into foreign settlements. 
His perseverance, however, w'as not fruitless. 
A deep impression had been made by his past 
efforts; and, in 1794, the House of Commons, 
for the first time, passed a bill of immediate 
abolition. The defenders of the slave trade 
were again rescued from the impending blow 
by the interposition of the peers; amongst 
whom a melancholy pre-eminence was thence¬ 
forth to be assigned to a member of the royal 


house, who lived to redeem his early error, 
by assenting, in the decline of life, to the intro¬ 
duction of the law for the abolition of slavery. 

Thus far the difficulties of the contest had 
chiefly arisen from the influence or the arts 
of his enemies; but Mr. V/ilberforce had now 
to sustain the more depressing weight of the 
secession of one of his most effective auxilia¬ 
ries. Suffering under nervous debility, and 
influenced by other motives, of which an expla¬ 
nation is to be found in his “History of the 
Abolition of the Slave Trade,” Mr. Clarkson 
was reluctantly compelled to retire from the 
field. With what deep regret he abandoned 
the contest may be leamt from his own vo¬ 
lumes ; and earnest as must have been his 
aspiration for its success, he was unable, 
during the eleven years which followed, to 
resume his place amidst the champions of the 
cause, though he lived to witness and to share 
in the triumph. 

Providence had gifted Mr. Wilberforce with 
greater nervous energy; and though sustain¬ 
ing labours not less severe, and a public 
responsibility incomparably more anxious than 
that under which the health of his colleague 
had given way, he returned to the conflict 
with unabated resolution. In 1795, and in the 
following year, he again laboured in vain to 
induce the House of Commons to resume the 
ground which they had already taken; nor 
could his all-believing charity repress the ho¬ 
nest indignation with w r hich he records that a 
body of his supporters, sufficient to have car¬ 
ried the bill, had been enticed from their places 
in the House, by the new opera of the “ Two 
Hunchbacks,” in which a conspicuous part 
was assigned to the great vocalist of that day, 
Signior Portugallo. A rivalry more formida¬ 
ble even than that of the Hay-Market had 
now arisen. Parodying his father’s celebrated 
maxim, Mr. Pitt -was engaged in conquering 
'Europe in the West Indies; and, with the 
.acquisition of new colonies, the slave trade 
acquired an increased extent, and its support¬ 
ers had obtained augmented parliamentary 
interest. The result was to subject Mr. Wil¬ 
berforce, in the debate of 1797, to a defeat 
more signal than any of those which he had 
hitherto endured. His opponents eagerly seized 
this opportunity to render it irreparable. On 
the motion of Mr. Charles Ellis, an address to 
the crown was carried, which transferred to 
the legislative bodies of the different colonies 
the task of preparing for the very measure 
which they had leagued together to frustrate. 
It was with extreme difficulty, and not wuthout 
the most strenuous remonstrances, that Mr. 
Wilberforce dissuaded Mr. Pitt from lending 
his support to this extravagant project. To 
increase the value of his Transatlantic con¬ 
quests, he had thrown open the intercourse 
between our colonies and those of Spain, and 
had offered, in the newly acquired islands, 
fresh lands, on which the slave traders might 
effect further settlements; and though, by 
ceaseless importunity, Mr. Wilberforce ob¬ 
tained the revocation of the first of these mea¬ 
sures, and the suspension of the second, yet 
the cupidity of the slave traders, and their 
influence in the national councils were largely 




11 


LIFE OF WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 


increased by these new prospects of gain. 
Their augmented powers were attested by 
ill success which attended Mr. Wilberforce’s 
annual motions in 1798 and 1799. 

I he contest had now endured for twelve 
years. Ten successive efforts had been fruit¬ 
lessly made to obtain the concurrence of the 
legislature in arresting this gigantic evil. 
Hopeless of success by perseverance in the 
same tactics, and yet incapable of retiring 
from the duty he had assumed, Mr. Wilber- 
force now addressed himself to the project of 
effecting, by a compromise, the end which 
seemed unattainable by direct and open hosti¬ 
lities. The year 1800 was accordingly con¬ 
sumed in negotiations with the chief West 
• India proprietors, of which the object was to 
win their concurrence in limiting the duration 
of the trade to a period of five or at most seven 
years. Delusive hopes of success cheered 
him for awhile^ but it was ere long apparent 
that the phalanx of his enemies were too firm 
to be penetrated. The peace of Amiens had 
brought to the court of London a minister 
from the French republic, who encouraged 
the hope that it might be possible to arrange a 
general convention of all the European powers 
for the abandonment of the traffic. Long and 
anxious were the endeavours made by Mr. 
Wilberforce for fnaturing this project. It is 
needless to say that they were unavailing. 
The season of 1801 was about to close, and 
the end in view appeared more distant than at 
any former time. Mr. Addington seems to 
have regarded the great expedition to St. Do¬ 
mingo as a kind of sedative, which would 
paralyze the resistance of the oppressed ne¬ 
groes throughout the West Indies; and feared 
to check the operation of this anodyne. The 
charm which these medical analogies exer¬ 
cised over the then occupant of the treasury 
bench, did not, however, extend its influence 
to Mr. Wilberforce. He announced his pur¬ 
pose to resume the parliamentary contest in 
the year 1802, when the attempt was accord¬ 
ingly made, though under the most discou¬ 
raging circumstances. The wit and eloquence 
of Mr. Canning, remonstrating against the 
settlement of new lands in Trinidad, had been 
repelled by the passive resistance of the then 
minister, and the time occupied in this discus¬ 
sion had delayed, until the dissolution of Par¬ 
liament interrupted the further progress of the 
Abolition Act. The tumult of war in the suc¬ 
ceeding year silenced every other sound; and 
the advocate of the slaves was condemned to 
a reluctant silence, whilst every voice was 
raised in reprobation of Bonaparte, and in 
resentment for the insult offered to Lord Whit¬ 
worth. At length the auguries of success 
became distinct and frequent. Mr. Pitt had 
returned to office, the dread of Jacobinism no 
longer haunted the public mind, but above all, 
the proprietors in the Carribbean Islands had 
made the discovery, that by encouraging the 
slave trade, they were creating in the planters 
of the conquered colonies the most dangerous 
rivals in the monopoly of the British market. 
The union with Ireland had added a new host 
of friends. Not a single representation from 
that country withheld his assistance. Amidst 


all these encouragements, Mr. Wilberforce 
again appealed to the House of Commons, rind 
carried the bill with overwhelming majorities. 
Cordial were now the congratulations of his 
friends, of every class, from the aged John 
Newton, of St. Mary Woolnoth, to Jeremy 
Bentham, whose celebrity as the most original 
thinker of his age was then in its early dawn. 
But the peers had not yet yielded to the influ¬ 
ence of Christian or moral philosophy. “The 
debate,” says Mr. Wilberforce’s Diary, “was 
opened by the chancellor in a very threaten¬ 
ing speech, because overrating property, and 
full of all moral blunders. He showed himself 
to labour with feelings as if he was the legiti¬ 
mate guardian of property—Lord Stanhope’s a 
wild speech—Lord Hawkesbury spoke honour¬ 
ably and handsomely.—Westmoreland like 
himself, coarse and bullying, but not without 
talent. Grenville spoke like a man of high 
and honourable principles, who, like a truly 
great statesman, regarded right and politic as 
identical.” Blunders and bullying, however, 
prevailed; and the question was adjourned to 
the following session. 

Before its arrival, Lord Brougham, then 
travelling on the continent as an American, 
and even “venturing to pass a week in the 
same house with several French generals,” 
had offered Mr. Wilberforce his assistance in 
pursuing various collateral inquiries through¬ 
out Holland and Germany, and in “ the great 
scenes of bondage (as it is called) Poland, 
Russia, and Hungary.” To this most potent 
ally many others were added. Mr. Stephen 
and Mr. Macaulay were unremitting in the 
use of the pen and press. The classical know¬ 
ledge of Mr. Robert Grant was put under con¬ 
tribution, to illustrate the state of slavery in 
the ancient world ; and even the daughters of 
Lord Muncaster were enlisted in the sendee 
of methodizing the contents of all African tra¬ 
vels, ancient and modern. High and sanguine 
as were the hopes of Mr. Wilberforce, he had 
yet another disappointment to sustain. The 
House of Commons of 1805 receding from 
their former resolutions, rejected his bill, and 
drew from him in his private journals, lan¬ 
guage of distress and pain such as no former 
defeat had been able to extort. 

The de&th of Mr. Pitt approached; an event 
which the most calm and impartial judgment 
must now regard as the necessary precursor 
of the liberation of Africa. For seventeen 
years since the commencement of the contest, 
he had guided the councils of this country. 
Successful in almost every other parliament¬ 
ary conflict, and triumphing over the most 
formidable antagonists, he had been com¬ 
pelled, by the Dundases and Jenkinsons, and 
Roses, who on every other subject quailed 
under his eye, to go to the grave without obli¬ 
terating that which he himself had denounced 
as the deepest stain on our national character, 
and the most enormous guilt recorded in the 
history of mankind. During that long period, 
millions of innocent victims had perished. 
Had he perilled his political existence on the 
issue, no rational man can doubt that an 
amount of guilt, of misery, of disgrace, and of 
loss, would have been spared to England, and 





12 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


to the civilized world, such as no other man 
ever had it in his power to arrest. 

The political antagonists of Mr. Pitt were 
men of a different temper; and although in the 
cabinet of Mr. Fox there were not wanting 
those who opposed him on this subject, yet it 
was an opposition, which, in the full tide of 
success, he could afford to disregard and to 
pardon. Had it endangered for a single ses¬ 
sion the abolition of the slave trade, these 
names, eminent as one at least of them was, 
would infallibly have been erased from the 
list of his administration. Mr. Fox’s ministry 
had scarcely taken their places when Lord 
Grenville introduced into the House of Lords, 
and speedily carried two bills, of which the 
first abolished the slave trade with all foreign 
powers, and the second forbade the employ¬ 
ment in that traffic of any British shipping 
which had not already been engaged in it; 
whilst the House of Commons, resolved that 
the slave trade was “ contrary to the principles 
of justice, humanity, and sound policy; and 
that they would proceed to abolish it with all 
practicable expedition.” Faithfully was this 
pledge redeemed. The death of Mr. Fox did 
not even delay its fulfilment. Early in 1807 
that great statesman, to whom at the distance 
of twenty-six years it was reserved to propose 
the abolition of slavery itself, introduced into 
the House of Commons a bill which placed on 
the British statute-book the final condemna¬ 
tion of the trade in slaves. Amidst the accla¬ 
mations of Parliament, the enthusiastic con¬ 
gratulations of his friends, and the applauses 
of the world, Mr. Wilberforce witnessed the 
success of the great object of his life with 
emotions, and in a spirit, which could not 
have found admission into a mind less pure 
and elevated than his own. The friendly 
shouts of victory which arose on every side 
were scarcely observed or heeded in the de¬ 
lightful consciousness of having rendered to 
mankind a service of unequalled magnitude. 
He retired to prostrate himself before the 
Giver of all good things, in profound humility 
and thankfulness,—wondering at the unme¬ 
rited bounty of God, who had carried him 
through twenty years of unremitting labour, 
and bestowed on him a name of imperishable 
glory. 

There are those who have disputed his title 
to the station thus assigned to him. Amongst 
the most recent is to be numbered one whose 
esteem is of infinitely too high value to be 
lightly disregarded, and whose judgment will 
carry with it no common authority. Mr. Ser¬ 
geant Talfourd, in his life of Charles Lamb, 
referring to an interview which took place 
between Lamb and Mr. Clarkson, uses the 
following expressions:—“There he also met 
with the true annihilator of the slave trade, 
Thomas Clarkson, who was then enjoying a 
necessary respite from his stupendous labours 
in a cottage on the borders of Ulswater. Lamb 
had no taste for oratorical philanthropy, but 
he felt the grandeur and simplicity of Clark¬ 
son’s character.” 

The contrast which is thus drawn between 
u the true annihilator of the slave trade,” and 
the oratorical philanthropist who declaimed 


against it, does not rest merely on the autho¬ 
rity of Mr. Talfourd. The great names of 
Wordsworth and Southey, with many minor 
writers, may be quoted in support of the same 
opinion. Nay, Mr. Clarkson has claimed for 
himself a place in the history of this great 
measure which affords no light countenance 
to the pretensions thus preferred in his behalf. 

In a map prefixed to his “ History of the Abo¬ 
lition of the Slave Trade,” that gigantic evil 
is represented under the image of a mound 
placed at the confluence of four rivers, whose 
united force is bearing it away. Of these 
streams one takes, near its source, the name 
of Clarkson, into which the rivulet of Wilber¬ 
force is seen to fall much lower down. His 
sons reclaim against this hydrography, and 
propose to correct the map by converting the 
tributary flood into the main channel. The 
discussion has, we think, been inevitably 
forced upon them; but it is one into which we 
decline to enter. *rlt may be sufficient to state y 
what are the positions which the biographers 
of Mr. Wilberforce have asserted, and, as we 
think, substantiated. They maintain, then, 
that his attention had been directed to the 
abolition of the slave trade for some time be¬ 
fore the subject had engaged Mr. Clarkson’s 
notice—that he had been co-operating with 
Mr. Pitt for the advancement of the measure 
long before his acquaintance with Mr. Clark¬ 
son commenced, and for at least two years 
before the period at which Mr. Clarkson takes 
to himself the credit of having made a con¬ 
vert of that great minister—that many of Mr. 
Clarkson’s exertions were undertaken at the 
instance and at the expense of Mr. Wilber¬ 
force, and conducted under his written instruc¬ 
tions,—and that from 1794 to 1805, when the 
victory was already won, Mr. Clarkson did 
not in fact participate at all in any of the 
labours which were unceasingly pursued by 
Mr. Wilberforce during the whole of that pe¬ 
riod. Thus far there seems no ground for 
dispute. In these volumes will be found a 
correspondence, the publication of which we 
cannot condemn, although we think that no¬ 
thing but the filial duty of vindicating their 
father’s highest title to renown could have jus¬ 
tified his sons in giving it to the world. The 
effect of it is to show that Mr. Clarkson’s ser¬ 
vices were remunerated by a large subscrip¬ 
tion; and that his private interests on this 
occasion were urged on Mr. Wilberforce with 
an importunity of which it would be painful 
to transfer the record to these pages. Remem¬ 
bering the advanced age, the eminent services, 
and the spotless character of that venerable 
and excellent man, v/e must be permitted to 
express our very deep regret that the ill-judged 
encomiums of his friends should have contri¬ 
buted to the publication of any thing which 
could for a moment disturb the serenity of the 
closing scenes of a life distinguished, as we 
believe, by the exercise of every social and 
domestic virtue, and the most unwearied bene¬ 
ficence to men of every condition and every 
country. 

Quitting the unwelcome contrast thus forced 
upon us, it is due to the memory of Mr. Wil¬ 
berforce to state, that no man ever so little 



13 


LIFE OF WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 


merited that condemnation which the language 
of Mr. Talfourd must be supposed to convey. 
He was indeed associated with those whose 
aid would have insured the triumph of ener¬ 
gies incomparably inferior to his. To mention 
no humbler names, he was aided by the genius 
and philanthropy of Henry Brougham, and by 
the affection and self-denial and unexampled 
energy of his brother-in-law Mr. Stephen, and 
of Mr. Zachary Macaulay. It may farther be 
admitted, that systematic and very continuous 
labours were not consonant with his intellec¬ 
tual character or with the habits of his life. 
But to the office which he had undertaken, he 
brought qualifications still more rare, and of 
far higher importance. It was within the 
reach of ordinary talents to collect, to examine, 
and to digest evidence, and to prepare and dis¬ 
tribute popular publications. But it required a 
mind as versatile and active, and powers as 
varied as were those of Mr. Wilberforce, to 
harmonize all minds, to quicken the zeal of 
some, and to repress the intemperance of 
others;—to negotiate with statesmen of all 
political parties, and, above all, to maintain 
for twenty successive years the lofty princi¬ 
ples of the contest unsullied even by the seem¬ 
ing admixture of any lower aims. The politi¬ 
cal position assigned to him by his constituency 
in Yorkshire, the multitude and intimacy of 
his personal friendships, the animal spirits 
which knew no ebb, the insinuating graces of 
his conversation, the graceful flow of his natu¬ 
ral eloquence, and an address at once the 
gayest, the most winning, and the most affec¬ 
tionate, marked him out as the single man of 
his age, to whom it would have been possible 
to conduct such a struggle through all its 
ceaseless difficulties and disappointments.— 
These volumes abound in proofs the most con¬ 
clusive that, not merely in the House of Com¬ 
mons, but in every other society, he lived for 
this great object—that he was the centre of a 
vast correspondence, employing and directing 
innumerable agents—enlisting in his service 
the whole circle of his connexions, surrounded 
by a body of secretaries (called by Mr. Pitt 
his “ white negroes,”) preparing or revising 
publications of every form, from folios of re¬ 
ports and evidence to newspaper paragraphs 
—engaged in every collateral project by which 
his main end could be promoted—now super¬ 
intending the deliberations of the Voluntary 
Society for the Abolition of the Slave Trade,— 
and then labouring from session to session in 
parliamentary committees, and occasionally 
passing (in opposition to his natural temper) 
we£ks of the most laborious seclusion, to pre¬ 
pare himself for his most public labours. A 
life of more devoted diligence has scarcely 
been recorded of any man; unless, indeed, we 
are to understand all mental industry as con¬ 
fined to those exertions which chain the la¬ 
bourer to his desk. 

Though Mr. Wilberforce survived the aboli¬ 
tion of the slave trade for more than twenty- 
five years, he did not retain his seat in the 
House of Commons for much more than half 
of that period. The interval between the 
enactment of this law, and the close of his 
parliamentary labours, was devoted to a cease¬ 


less watchfulness over the interests of the 
African race. Our space forbids us to pursue 
in any detail Ihe history of those exertions. 
But it is important to notice, that although de¬ 
clining strength compelled him to relinquish to 
others the chief conduct of the warfare against 
slavery itself, his efforts for its extinction were 
continued in every form, until the introduction 
into Parliament, of the law which declared, 
that from the 1st of August, 1834, “slavery 
should be utterly, and for ever abolished, and 
unlawful throughout the British colonies, pos¬ 
sessions, and plantations abroad.” The mea¬ 
sure had already been received with acclama¬ 
tion in the House of Commons, ere he was 
summoned to his final reward; and it was one 
of the subjects of the last conversation in 
which he ever engaged. 

It would have not been compatible with the 
character of Mr. Wilberforce, nor a fulfilment 
of the mission with which he believed himself 
to be invested, if he had concentrated his efforts 
for the good of mankind on any single object, 
however arduous. “God has set before me 
the reformation of my country’s manners,” is 
the solemn persuasion which he recorded in 
his twenty-seventh year, and from which, to 
the last hour of his life, he never swerved. 
During that period Great Britain underwent 
internal changes more important than had oc¬ 
curred during any two preceding centuries. 
Agriculture, commerce, manufactures, reve¬ 
nue, and population expanded wuth unexam¬ 
pled elasticity. Never before had the physical 
powers of nature been so largely subjugated 
to the physical wants of mankind, and never 
was the necessity more urgent for some cor¬ 
responding increase of the moral powers of 
the conqueror. The steam-engine would have 
been a curse rather than a blessing, if the age 
which it has enriched had continued stationary 
in religious and intellectual improvement. 
Watt and Arkwright w'ould have been but 
equivocal benefactors of their fellow-country¬ 
men without the co-operation of Bell and Lan¬ 
caster. England would have used like a giant 
the giant’s strength which she was acquiring. 
Wealth and sensuality, hard-heartedness, on 
the one side, must have been brought into a 
fearful conflict with poverty, ignorance, and 
discontent, on the other. But the result has 
been otherwise, and these islands have be¬ 
come not merely the hive of productive in¬ 
dustry, but the centre of efforts of unequalled 
magnitude to advance the highest interests of 
the human race. If in elevating the moral 
and religious character of our people during 
the last century, the first place be due to the 
illustrious founder of methodism, the second 
may be justly claimed for Mr. Wilberforce. 
No two men can be named who in their re¬ 
spective generations exercised an influence so 
extensive, permanent, and beneficial over 
public opinion. In walks of life the most 
dissimilar, and by means widely different, they 
concurred in proposing to themselves the same 
great end, and pursued it in the same spirit. 
Their views of Christian doctrine scarcely 
differed. They inculcated the same severe, 
though affectionate, morality; and were ani¬ 
mated by the same holy principles, fervent 
B 





14 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


zeal, and constitutional hilarity of temper. No 
one who believes that the courses of the world 
are guided by a supreme and benevolent intel¬ 
ligence, will hesitate to admit, that each of 
these men was appointed by Providence to ex¬ 
ecute a high and sacred trust, and prepared 
for its discharge by those gifts of nature and 
fortune which the circumstances of their times 
peculiarly demanded. The career of Wesley 
has been celebrated by the generous enthu¬ 
siasm of his disciples, and the colder, though 
more discriminating admiration of Southey. 
In these volumes is to be found a record not 
less impressive of the labours of Mr. Wilber- 
force to exalt and purify the national character. 
Amongst the innumerable schemes of benevo¬ 
lence which were projected during the last 
half century, there is scarcely one of the more 
considerable in which he does not appear to 
have largely participated. Now establishing 
schools for pupils of every age, and Christians 
of all denominations, and then engaged in 
plans for the circulation of the Scriptures, and 
the diffusion of Christian knowledge. The 
half-civilized inhabitants of the recesses of 
London, the prisoners in her jails, the sick and 
destitute in their crowded lodgings, the poor of 
Ireland, the heathen nations refined or bar¬ 
barous, the convicts in New Holland, and the 
Indians on the Red river, all in their turn, or 
rather all at once, were occupying his mind, 
exhausting his purse, and engaging his time 
and influence for schemes for their relief or 
improvement. The mere enumeration of the 
plans in which he was immersed, and of the 
societies formed for their accomplishment, pre¬ 
sents such a mass and multitude of compli¬ 
cated affairs, as inevitably to suggest the con¬ 
clusion that no one man, nor indeed any hun¬ 
dred men, could conduct or understand, or 
remember, them all. There is, however, no 
miracle to explain. Living in the centre of 
political action, and surrounded by innumer¬ 
able friends, agents, and supporters, Mr. Wil- 
berforce was relieved from all the more toilsome 
duties of these countless undertakings. He 
may be said to have constituted himself, and 
to have been acknowledged, by others, as a 
voluntary minister of public instruction and 
public charities. No department in Downing 
street was ever administered with equal suc¬ 
cess ; none certainly by agents equally zealous, 
persevering, and effective. His authority was 
maintained by the reverence and affection of 
his fellow-labourers, and by the wisdom of his 
counsels, his unfailing bounty, and his ever 
ready and affectionate sympathy. 

No man was less liable to the imputation of 
withdrawing from costly personal sacrifices to 
promote those schemes of philanthropy which 
the world, or at least his own world, would 
admire and celebrate. During a large part of 
his life, Mr. Wilberforce appears to have de¬ 
voted to acts of munificence and charity, from 
a fourth to a third of his annual income; nor 
did he shrink from the humblest and most re¬ 
pulsive offices of kindness to the sick and the 
wretched with whom he was brought into con¬ 
tact. Yet we believe that no more genuine 
proof was ever given of his anxiety for the 
highest interests of mankind than in the publi¬ 


cation of his “ Practical View of the Prevailing 
Religious System of Professed Christians in 
the Higher and Middle Classes of this Country, 
contrasted with real Christianity.” This book 
appeared in 1797. The interest with which it 
was originally received might be readily ex¬ 
plained by the singularity of a very conspi¬ 
cuous member of Parliament undertaking to 
handle such a theme. But there must be some 
deeper cause for the continued popularity of 
an octavo volume, of which, within half a cen¬ 
tury, fifty large editions, at the least, have been 
published in England and in the United States. 
Tne applauses of ecclesiastics of every class, 
from old John Newton to the then bishop of 
London, might be yielded with liberal indul¬ 
gence to so powerful and unexpected an aux¬ 
iliary.—But that could be no common produc¬ 
tion which moved the author of the “ Pursuits 
of Literature” for once to quit his stilts, and to 
pour out a heartfelt tribute of praise in his 
unadulterated mother tongue; and which drew 
from Edmund Burke his grateful acknowledg¬ 
ments to the author for the comfort which he 
had diffused over the two last days of his event¬ 
ful life. 

Yet they who shall search this book for deep 
theology, or profound investigation, will be 
disappointed. “Philosophy,” says Abraham 
Tucker, “ may yet be styled the art of marshal¬ 
ling the ideas in the understanding, and reli¬ 
gion that of disciplining the imagination.” In 
the first of these arts Mr. Wilberforce did not 
excel; in the second he has scarcely ever been 
surpassed. The first three chapters of this 
work appear to us decidedly inferior to the 
rest. He is there upon a debatable land,— 
contrasting the inspired text with the prevalent 
opinions of his age on some parts of Christian 
doctrine. The accuracy of his own interpre¬ 
tations, or rather of those which are received 
by that part of the church of England usually 
designated as evangelical, being assumed 
throughout these discussions, they will scarcely 
convince such as read the New Testament in 
a different sense. But when he emerges from 
these defiles, and enters upon broader grounds, 
comparing the precepts of revelation with the 
conventional morality of the world’s favoured 
children, he speaks (for it is throughout a 
spoken rather than a written style) with a per¬ 
suasive energy which breathes the very spirit 
of the inspired volume. Here all is the mature 
result of profound meditation; and his thoughts, 
if not always methodical and compact, are at 
least always poured out in language so ear' 
nest and affectionate, that philanthropy never 
yet assumed a more appropriate, or a more 
eloquent style. It is the expostulation of a 
brother. Unwelcome truth is delivered with 
scrupulous fidelity, and yet with a tenderness 
which demonstrates that the monitor feels the 
pain which he reluctantly inflicts. It is this 
tone of human sympathy breathing in every 
page which constitutes the essential charm of 
this book; and it is to the honour of our com¬ 
mon nature that we are all disposed to love 
best that teacher, who, with the deepest com¬ 
passion for our sorrows, has the least indul¬ 
gence for the errors or the faults by which they 
have been occasioned. Whatever objections 



LIFE OF WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 


15 


may have been raised to Mr. Wilberforce’s 
theological opinions, there is but one which 
can be stated to the exegetical part of his trea¬ 
tise. It is, that he has erected a standard too 
pure and too sublime for this world’s use, and 
proposes a scheme of Utopian perfection which 
is calculated, by discouraging hope, to repress 
exertion. The obvious answer is, that the de¬ 
sign of every rule which can be given for the 
conduct of life is to afford an accurate measure 
of our deflection from the path of duty, and a 
trustworthy guide for our return. Any system 
of religion or ethics which tolerated the slight¬ 
est compromise with moral evil, would be so 
far subversive of its own purpose; although it 
is from the general prevalence of moral evil 
that such systems derive their existence and 
their value. To mark distinctly the departure 
of the luxurious, busy, care-worn, and ambi¬ 
tious age to which we belong, from the theory 
and practice of Christian morality, was the 
task which Mr. Wilberforce proposed to him¬ 
self. Never were the sensuality, the gloom, 
and the selfishness which fester below the 
polished surface of society, brought into more 
vivid contrast with the faith, and hope, and 
charity, which in their combination form the 
Christian character; and never was that con¬ 
trast drawn with a firmer hand, with a more 
tender spirit, or with a purer inspiration for the 
happiness of mankind. 

To all these philanthropic labours were 
added others, addressed, though less directly, 
to the same ends, and undertaken and pursued 
in a similar spirit. In his political career, Mr. 
Wilberforce never ceased to act and to speak 
as one to whom Providence had confided the 
sacred trust of advancing the moral character, 
and promoting the welfare of the age and 
nation to which he belonged. As a public 
speaker, he enjoyed great and well-merited 
celebrity. But it was not in the House of 
Commons that his powers in this kind were 
exhibited to the greatest advantage. In all the 
deliberations of Parliament may be discerned 
a tacit reference to the nature of royal citation 
which has brought together the two houses 
“for the despatch of divers weighty and urgent 
affairs.” The knights and burgesses are em¬ 
phatically men of business, and have but little 
indulgence for any thing which tasks the un¬ 
derstanding, addresses itself to the heart, or 
elevates the imagination;—least of all for 
ostentatious display of the resources of the 
speaker’s mind. He who can contribute a per¬ 
tinent fact, or a weighty argument, need not 
raise his style above the region of the pathos. 
The aspirant for fame must excel in perspi¬ 
cuity of statement, in promptitude in the expo¬ 
sure or invention of sophistry, and in a ready 
though abstemious use of wit, ridicule, and 
sarcasm. In these requisites for success, Mr. 
Wilberforce was deficient. He had not much 
statistical knowledge, nor was he familiar with 
any branch of political economy. His argu¬ 
mentation was not usually perspicuous, and 
was seldom energetic. The habit of digression, 
the parenthetical structure of his periods, and 
the minute qualifications suggested by his 
reverence for truth, impeded the flow of his 
discourse, and frequently obscured its design. 


His exquisite perception of the ridiculous kept 
him in the exercise of habitual self-denial, and, 
the satire which played upon his countenance 
was suppressed by his universal charity, be¬ 
fore it could form itself into language. With 
these disadvantages he was still a great par¬ 
liamentary speaker; and there were occasions 
when, borne by some sudden impulse, or car¬ 
ried by diligent preparation over the diffuse¬ 
ness which usually encumbered him, he de¬ 
lighted and subdued his hearers. His reputa¬ 
tion in the House of Commons rested, however, 
chiefly upon other grounds. In that assembly, 
any one speaks with immense advantage whose 
character, station, or presumed knowledge is 
such as to give importance to his opinions. 
The dogmas of some men are of incomparably 
more value than the logic of others; and no 
member except the leaders of the great con¬ 
tending parties, addressed the house with an 
authority equal to that of Mr. Wilberforce. 
The homage rendered to his personal character, 
his command over a small compact party, his 
representation of the county of York, the con¬ 
fidence of the great religious bodies in every 
part of England, and, above all, his indepen¬ 
dent neutrality, gave to his suffrage, an almost 
unexampled value. It was usually delivered 
with a demeanour of conscious dignity, unal¬ 
loyed by the slighest tinge of arrogance, and 
contrasting oddly enough with the insignifi¬ 
cance of his slight and shapeless person. 
Yet the spell he exercised was partly drawn 
from still another source. Parliamentary elo¬ 
quence is essentially colloquial; and, when 
most embellished or sustained, is rather pro¬ 
longed discourse than oratory properly so 
called. It was by a constant, perhaps un¬ 
avoidable observance of his tone, that Mr. 
Wilberforce exercised the charm which none 
could resist, but which many were unable to 
explain. His speeches in the House of Com¬ 
mons bore the closest resemblance to his fami¬ 
liar conversation. There was the same ear¬ 
nest sincerity of manner, the same natural 
and varied cadences, the same animation and 
ease, and the same tone of polished society; 
and while his affectionate, lively, and graceful 
talk flowed on without the slightest appearance 
of effort or study, criticism itself scarcely per¬ 
ceived, or at least excused the redundancy of 
his language. 

But, as we have said, it was not in the 
House of Commons, that his powers as a public 
speaker had their highest exercise. His habi¬ 
tual trains of thought, and the feelings which 
he most deeply cherished, could rarely find 
utterance in that scene of strife and turmoil. 
At the hustings, where the occasion justified 
the use of a more didactic style, there was 
much simple majesty in the uncompromising 
avowal of his principles, and in the admoni¬ 
tions suggested by them. It was the grave 
eloquence of the pulpit applied to secular uses. 
But it was in the great assemblages held for 
religious and charitable objects that the cur¬ 
rent of his eloquence moved with the greatest 
impetus and volume. Here he at once felt his 
way to the hearts of the dense mass of eager 
and delighted listeners. In the fulness of the 
charity which believeth all things, giving credit 



16 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


fo the multitude for feelings as pure and bene¬ 
volent as his own, he posssessed the power of 
gracefully and decorously laying aside the 
reserve which habitually shrouded from the 
irreverent and profane the more secret and 
cherished feelings of his heart. Nothing was 
ever more singular, or less framed upon any 
previous model of eloquence, than were some 
of those addresses in which the chastened 
style of the House of Commons (of all assem¬ 
blies the most fastidious) was employed to 
give utterance to thoughts which, though best 
becoming the deepest solitude, retained, even 
in these crowded scenes, their delicacy not less 
than their beauty. The most ardent of his ex¬ 
pressions bore the impress of indubitable sin¬ 
cerity, and of calm and sober conviction; 
instantly distinguishing them from the less 
genuine enthusiasm of others who dissolved 
their meaning in ecstasy, and soared beyond 
the reach of human comprehension into the 
third heavens of artificial rapture. It was an 
example perhaps as full of danger as of inte¬ 
rest; and not a few are the offensive imita¬ 
tions which have been attempted of a model 
which could be followed successfully, or even 
innocently, by none whose bosoms did not 
really burn with the same heavenly affections, 
who did not practise the same severe observ¬ 
ance of truth, or whose taste had not been re¬ 
fined to the same degree of sensibility. 

No part of Mr. Wilberforce’s biography will 
be read with greater interest than that which 
describes his political career. Holding for 
forty-three years a conspicuous place in the 
House of Commons, the current of public 
affairs as it flowed past him, reflected his cha¬ 
racter in a thousand different forms; and exhi¬ 
bited on the most tumultuous theatre of ac¬ 
tion, the influence of those sacred principles, 
with the workings of which we are for the 
most part conversant only in more quiet and 
secluded scenes. 

“ From any one truth all truth may be in¬ 
ferred,”—a Baconian text, from which certain 
commentators of the last century concluded, 
that he who possessed a Bible might dispense 
with Grotius and with Locke; and that at the 
approach of the Scriptures all other writings 
should disappear, as they had once vanished at 
the presence of the Koran. The opinion which 
precisely reverses this doctrine is recom¬ 
mended by less ingenuity, and by no better 
logic. Mr. Wilberforce was far too wise a 
man to imagine that any revelation from God 
could be designed to supersede the duty of 
patient research into all other sources of 
knowledge. But neither did he ever reject 
the vast body of ethical precepts delivered by 
divine inspiration, as irrelevant to the politi¬ 
cal questions with which he was daily con¬ 
versant. He invariably brought every con¬ 
clusion drawn from other studies to the test 
of their consistency with the sacred oracles. 
They supplied him with an ordinate by which 
to measure every curve. They gave him what 
most public men egregiously want,—the firm 
hold of a body of unchanging opinions. In 
his case this advantage was peculiarly mo¬ 
mentous. His neglected education, his inap¬ 
titude for severe and continuous mental labour, 


the strength of his sympathies, and his strong 
personal attachment to Mr. Pitt, all seemed to 
give the promise of a ductile, vacillating, un¬ 
certain course. Yet in reality no man ever 
pursued in Parliament a career more entirely 
guided by fixed principles, or more frequently 
at variance with his habitual inclinations. 
His connexions, both public and private, not 
less than his natural temper, disposed him to 
that line of policy which, in our days, assumes 
the title of “conservative;” yet his conduct 
was almost invariably such as is now distin¬ 
guished by the epithets “ liberal and reform¬ 
ing.” A Tory by predilection, he was in 
action a Whig. His heart was with Mr. Pitt; 
but on all the cardinal questions of the times, 
his vote was given to Mr. Fox. 

This conflict of sentiment with principle 
did not, however, commence in the earlier 
days of Mr. Pitt’s administration; for the mor¬ 
tal foe of Jacobinism entered the House of 
Commons as a parliamentary reformer; and 
Mr. Wilberforce executed a rapid journey 
from Nice to London in the winter of 1784 to 
support, by his eloquence and his vote, the 
Reform Bill which his friend introduced in 
the session of that year. The following broke 
sentences from his diary record the result. 
“At Pitt’s all day—it goes on well—sat up late 
chatting with Pitt—his hopes of the country 
and noble patriotic heart—to town—Pitt’s— 
house—parliamentary reform—terribly disap¬ 
pointed and beat—extremely fatigued—spoke 
extremely ill, but commended—called at Pitt’s 
—met poor Wyvill.” Of this “ ill-spoken but 
commended speech,” the following sentence 
is preserved: “The consequence of this mea¬ 
sure,” he said, “ will be that the freedom of 
opinion will be restored, and party connexions 
in a great measure vanish, for party on one 
side begets party on the other;”—a prophecy 
which, rightly understood, is perceptibly ad¬ 
vancing towards its fulfilment. The ill suc¬ 
cess of Mr. Pitt’s proposal did not damp the 
zeal of Mr. Wilberforce. He introduced into 
the House of Commons, and even succeeded 
in carrying there two of the most important 
enactments of the Reform Bill, in which, at 
the distance of nearly half a century, Lord 
Grey obtained the reluctant concurrence of 
the peers. One of these measures provided 
for a general registration of voters ; the others 
for holding the poll, at the same time, in seve¬ 
ral different parts of the same county. 

From the commencement of the war with 
France is to be dated the dissolution of the 
political alliance which had, till then, been 
maintained with little interruption between 
Mr. Wilberforce and Mr. Pitt. Partaking more 
deeply than most men of the prevalent abhor¬ 
rence of the revolutionary doctrines of that 
day, Mr. Wilberforce’s resistance to the war 
was decided and persevering. A written mes¬ 
sage from Mr. Pitt, delivered on the first debate 
on that question, “ assuring him that his speak¬ 
ing then might do irreparable mischief, and 
promising that he should have another oppor¬ 
tunity before war should be declared,” defeated 
his purpose of protesting publicly against the 
approaching hostilities. Accident prevented 
the redemption of the pledge, but Mr. Wilber- 





LIFE OF WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 


17 


force’s purposes remained unshaken. “Our 
government,” he says in a letter on this sub¬ 
ject, “ had been, for some months before the 
breaking out of the war, negotiating with the 
principal European powers, for the purpose 
of obtaining a joint representation to France, 
assuring her that if she would formally engage 
to keep within her limits, and not molest her 
neighbours, she should be suffered to settle 
her own internal government and constitution 
without interference. I never was so earnest 
with Mr. Pitt on any occasion as I was in my 
entreaties before the war broke out, that he 
would openly declare in the House of Com¬ 
mons that he had been, and then was negotiat¬ 
ing this treaty. I urged on him that the decla¬ 
ration might possibly produce an immediate 
effect in France, where it was manifest there 
prevailed an opinion that we were meditating 
some interference with their internal affairs, 
and the restoration of Louis to his throne. At 
all events, I hoped that in the first lucid inter¬ 
val, France would see how little reason there 
was for continuing the war with Great Britain ; 
and, at least, the declaration must silence all 
but the most determined oppositionists in this 
country. How far this expectation would have 
been realized you may estimate by Mr. Fox’s 
language when Mr. Pitt, at my instance,-did 
make the declaration last winter (1799.) ‘If,’ 

he said, ‘the right honourable gentleman had 
made the declaration now delivered, to France, 
as well as to Russia, Austria, and Prussia, I 
should have nothing more to say or to de¬ 
sire.’ ” 

Experience and reflection confirmed these 
original impressions. After the war had con¬ 
tinued for a year, Mr. Wilberforce was en¬ 
gaged in making up his mind cautiously and 
maturely, and, therefore, slowly as to the best 
conduct to be observed by Great Britain in 
the present critical emergency. With what a 
severe self-examination he was accustomed to 
conduct these inquiries, may be learnt from 
an entry made at that period in his private 
journal. “It is a proof to me of my secret 
ambition, that though I foresee how much I 
shall suffer in my feelings throughout from 
differing from Pitt, and how indifferent a figure 
I shall most likely make, yet that motives of 
ambition will insinuate themselves. Give me, 
O Lord, a true sense of the comparative value 
of earthly and of heavenly things; this will 
render me sober-minded, and fix my affections 
on things above.” 

Such was the solemn preparation with 
which he approached this momentous ques¬ 
tion, and moved in the session of 1794 an 
amendment to the address recommending a 
more pacific policy. The failure of that at¬ 
tempt did not shake his purpose; for after the 
interval of a few days he voted with Mr. Grey 
on a direct motion for the re-establishment of 
peace- The genuine self-denial with which 
this submission to a clear sense of duty was 
attended, Mr. Wilberforce has thus touchingly 
described: “ No one who has not seen a good 
deal of public life, and felt how difficult and 
painful it is to differ widely from those with 
whom you wish to agree, can judge at what 
an expense of feeling such duties are per¬ 


formed. Wednesday, February 4, dined at 
Lord Camden’s. Pepper, and Lady Arden, 
Steele, &c. I felt queer, and all day out of 
spirits—wrong! but hurt by the idea of Pitt’s 
alienation—12th, party of the old firm, at the 
Speaker’s ! I not there.” 

Mr. Pitt’s alienation was not the only, nor 
the most severe penalty which Mr. Wilberforce 
had to pay on this occasion. The sarcasms 
of Windham,—the ironical compliments of 
Burke,—a cold reception from the king,—and 
even Fox’s congratulation upon his approach¬ 
ing alliance with the opposition, might have 
been endured. But it was more hard to bear 
the rebukes, however tenderly conveyed, of 
his friend and early guide, the dean of Car¬ 
lisle; the reproaches of the whole body of his 
clerical allies for the countenance which they 
conceived him to have given to the enemies 
of religion and of order; and the earnest re¬ 
monstrances of many of his most powerful 
supporters in Yorkshire. The temper so acces¬ 
sible to all kindly influences, was, however, 
sustained by the invigorating voice of an ap¬ 
proving conscience. He resumed his pacific 
proposals in the spring of 1795, and though 
still defeated, it was by a decreasing majority. 
Before the close of that year, Mr. Pitt himself 
had become a convert to the opinions of his 
friend. The war had ceased to be popular, 
and Lord Malmesbury’s negotiation followed. 
The failure of that attempt at length convinced 
Mr. Wilberforce that the war was inevitable ; 
and thenceforward his opposition to it ceased. 

The same independent spirit raised him, on 
less momentous occasions, above the influ¬ 
ence of the admiration and strong personal 
attachment which he never withheld from Mr. 
Pitt at any period of their lives. Though the 
minister was “furious” on the occasion, he 
voted and spoke against the motion for aug¬ 
menting the income of the Prince of Wales. 
Though fully anticipating the ridicule which 
was the immediate consequence of the attempt, 
he moved the House of Commons to interfere 
for the liberation of Lafayette, when confined 
in the jail of Olmuky. Though, at the sug¬ 
gestion of Bishop Prettyman, Mr. Pitt pledged 
himself to introduce a bill which would have 
silenced every dissenting minister to whom 
the magistrates might have thought proper to 
refuse a license, Mr. Wilberforce resisted, and 
with eventful success, this encroachment on 
the principles of toleration. Though the whole 
belligerent policy of Mr. Pitt, on the resump¬ 
tion of the war, rested on continental alliances, 
cemented by subsidies from the British trea¬ 
sury, that system found in Mr. Wilberforce 
the most strenuous and uncompromising op¬ 
ponent. On the revival of hostilities in 1803, 
he supported Mr. Fox not merely with his 
vote, but with a speech which he subsequently 
published. The impeachment of Lord Mel 
ville brought him into a direct and painful 
hostility to those with whom he had lived in 
youthful intimacy, and who still retained their 
hold on his heart. Mr. Pitt was his chosen 
friend—Lord Melville his early companion^ 
But even on this occasion, though compelled 
to watch the movements of the “ fascinating 
eye” and “the agilated countenance” turned 



18 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


reproachfully to him from the treasury bench, 
he delivered one of the most memorable of his 
parliamentary speeches,—in which the stern¬ 
est principles of public morality were so 
touchingly combined with compassion for the 
errors he condemned, that the effect was irre¬ 
sistible ; and the casting vote of the speaker 
can scarcely be said with greater truth to have 
determined the decision of the house. Nothing 
more truly in the spirit of the pure and lofty 
principles by which he was guided is recorded 
of him, than his defence to the charge of incon¬ 
sistency for declining to join the deputation 
which carried up to the king the subsequent 
address for the removal of Lord Melville from 
the royal councils. “I am a little surprised 
that it should be imputed as a fault to any that 
they did not accompany the procession to St. 
James’s. I should have thought that men’s 
own feelings might have suggested to them 
that it was a case in which the heart might be 
permitted to give a lesson to the judgment. 
My country might justly demand that, in my 
decision on Lord Melville’s conduct, I should 
be governed by the rules of justice, and the 
principles of the constitution, without suffer¬ 
ing party considerations, personal friendship, 
or any extrinsic motive whatever to interfere; 
that in all that was substantial I should deem 
myself as in the exercise of a judicial office. 
But when the sentence of the law is past, is 
not that sufficient] Am I to join in the exe¬ 
cution of it I Is it to be expected of me that I 
am to stifle the natural feelings of the heart, 
and not even to shed a tear over the very sen¬ 
tence I am pronouncing I I know not what 
Spartan virtue or stoical pride might require; 
hut I know that I am taught a different, ay, 
and a better lesson by a greater than either 
Lycurgus or Zeno. Christianity enforces no 
such sacrifice. She requires us indeed to do 
justice, but to love mercy. I learnt not in her 
school to triumph even over a conquered ene¬ 
my, and must I join the triumph over a fallen 
friend I” 

We might, with the aid of these volumes, 
trace Mr. Wilberforce’s political career through 
all the memorable controversies of his times, 
and prove, beyond the reach of contradiction, 
that every vote was given under such a sense 
of responsibility to the Supreme Lawgiver as 
raised him above the influence of those human 
affections, which scarcely any man felt more 
keenly. He was supported by the acclama¬ 
tions of no party, for in turn he resisted all. 
Even the great religious bodies who acknow¬ 
ledged him as their leader were frequently 
dissatisfied with a course which, while it 
adorned their principles, conceded nothing to 
their prejudices. The errors into which he 
may have fallen were in no single case de¬ 
based by any 6elfish motive, and were ever on 
the side of peace and of the civil and religious 
liberties of mankind. 

But those indications of human character 
which it chiefly concerns us to study, are not, 
after all, to be discovered in places where men 
act together in large masses, and under strong 
excitement. Mr. Wilberforce’s interior life is 
exhibited in this biography with a minuteness 
of self-dissection which we think hardly possi¬ 


ble to contemplate without some degree of 
pain. It was his habit to note, in the most 
careless and elliptical language, every passing 
occurrence, however trivial, apparently as a 
mere aid to recollection. But his journals 
also contain the results of a most unsparing 
self-examination, and record the devotional 
feelings with which his mind was habitually 
possessed. They bear that impress of perfect 
sincerity, without which they would have been 
altogether worthless. The suppression of them 
would have disappointed the expectations of a 
very large body of readers; and the sacred 
profession of the editors gives peculiar autho¬ 
rity to their judgment as to the advantage of 
such disclosures. To their filial piety the 
whole work, indeed almost every line of it, 
bears conclusive testimony. We feel, how¬ 
ever, an invincible repugnance to the transfer 
into these pages of the secret communings of 
a close self-observer with his Maker. The 
Church of Rome is wise in proclaiming the 
sanctity of the confessional. The morbid ana¬ 
tomy of the human heart (for such it must 
appear to every one who dares to explore its 
recesses) is at best a cheerless study. It would 
require some fortitude in any man to state 
how much of our mutual affection and esteem 
depends upon our imperfect knowledge of 
each other. The same creative wisdom which 
shelters from every human eye the workings 
of our animal frame, has not less closely 
shrouded from observation the movements of 
our spiritual nature. The lowly and contrite 
spirit is a shrine in which he who inhabiteth 
eternity condescends to dwell, but where we 
at least are accustomed to regard every other 
presence as profane. There is, we think, 
great danger in such publications. For one 
man who, like Mr. Wilberforce, will honestly 
lay bare his conscience on paper, there are at 
least one hundred, living with the fear or the 
hope of the biographer before their eyes, who 
will apply themselves to the same task in a 
very different spirit. The desire of posthu¬ 
mous, or of living fame, will dictate the ac¬ 
knowledgment of faults, which the reader is to 
regard as venial, while he is to admire the 
sagacity with which they are dictated, and the 
tenderness of conscience with which they are 
deplored. We may be wrong; but both expe¬ 
rience and probability seem to us to show 
that the publication of the religious journals 
of one honest man, is likely to make innume¬ 
rable hypocrites. 

The domestic life of Mr. Wilberforce is a 
delightful object of contemplation, though it 
cannot be reduced into the form of distinct 
narration. From his twenty-sixth year his 
biography consists rather of a description of 
habits than of a succession of events. No man 
had less to do with adventure, or was more com¬ 
pletely independent of any such resource. The 
leisure which he could withdraw from the ser¬ 
vice of the public was concentrated upon his 
large and happy household, and on the troops 
of friends who thronged the hospitable man¬ 
sion in which he lived in the neighbourhood 
of London. 

The following sketch of his domestic retire¬ 
ment possesses a truth which will be at once 



LIFE OF WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 


19 


recognised by every one who was accustomed 
to associate with him in such scenes: 

“ Who that ever joined him in his hour of 
daily exercise, cannot see him now as he 
walked round his garden at Highwood, now 
in animated and even playful conversation, 
and then drawing from his copious pockets 
(to contain Dalrymple’s State Papers was 
their standard measure) a Psalter, a Horace, 
a Shakspeare,.or Cowper, and reading or re¬ 
citing chosen passages, and then catching at 
loug stored flower leaves as the wind blew 
them from the pages, or standing by a favour¬ 
ite gumcistus to repair the loss. Then he 
would point out the harmony of the tints, the 
beauty of the pencilling and the perfection of 
the colouring, and sum up all into those ascrip¬ 
tions of praise to the Almighty which were 
ever welling from his grateful heart. He loved 
flowers with all the simple delight of child¬ 
hood. He would hover from bed to bed over 
his favourites, and when he came in, even 
from his shortest walk, he deposited a few 
that he had gathered safely in his room before 
he joined the breakfast table. Often he would 
say as he enjoyed their fragrance, ‘ How good 
is God to us. What should we think of a 
friend who had furnished us with a magnifi¬ 
cent house and all we needed, and then coming 
in to see that all had been provided according 
to his wishes, should he be hurt to find that no 
scents had been placed in the rooms 1 Yet so 
has God dealt with us—lovely flowers are the 
smiles of his goodness.’ ” 

The following letter to one of his children 
exhibits Mr. Wilberforce in one of those cha¬ 
racters in which he excelled most men: 

“ Battersea Rise, Sept. 14, 1814. 

“ My very dear-: 

“ I do not relish the idea that you are the 
only one of my children who has not written 
to me during my absence, and that you should 
be the only one to whom I should not write. I 
therefore take up my pen, though but fora few 
moments, to assure you that I do not suspect 
your silence to have arisen from the want of 
affection for me, any more than that which I 
myself have hitherto observed has proceeded 
from this source. There is a certain demon 
called procrastination, who inhabits a castle in 
the air at Sandgate, as well as at so many 
other places, and I suspect that you have been 
carried up some day (at the tail of your kite 
perhaps) and lodged in that same habitation, 
which has fine large rooms in it from which 
there are beautiful prospects in all directions; 
and probably you will not quit a dwelling-place 
that you like so well, till you hear that I am on 
my way to Sandgate. You will meet the to¬ 
morrow man there, (it just occurs to me,) and 
I hope you will liave prevailed on him to tell 
you the remainder of that pleasant story, a part 
cf which Miss Edgeworth has related, though.I 
greatly fear he would still partake so far of the 
spirit of the place as to leave a part untold till 
-to-morrow. But I am trifling sadly, since I 
am this morning unusually pressed for time, I 
will therefore only guard my dear boy se¬ 
riously against procrastination, one of the 
most dangerous assailants of usefulness, and 


i assure him that I am to-day, to-morrow, and 
always while I exist, his affectionate father. 

“ W. WlLBERFORCE.” 

Mr. Wilberforce excelled in the arts of hos¬ 
pitality, and delighted in the practice of them. 
His cordial welcome taught the most casual 
guest to feel that he was at home; and the 
mass of his friends and acquaintance could 
scarcely suppose that there was a domestic 
sanctuary still more sacred and privileged than 
that into which they were admitted. Amongst 
them are not a few obscure, with some illus¬ 
trious names; and of the latter Mr. Pitt is by 
far the most conspicuous. 

There is no one filling so large a space in 
recent history as Mr. Pitt, with whose private 
habits the world is so little acquainted. These 
volumes do not contribute much to dispel the 
obscurity. We find him indeed at one time 
passing an evening in classical studies or 
amusements with Mr. Canning; and at another, 
cutting walks through his plantations at Hol- 
wood, with the aid of Mr. Wilberforce and 
Lord Grenville. But on the whole, the Wil¬ 
liam Pitt of this work is the austere minister 
with whom we were already acquainted, and 
not the man himself in his natural or in his 
emancipated state. 

The following extract of a letter from Mr. 
Wilberforce is almost the only passage which 
gives us an intimation of the careless familiar¬ 
ity in which for many years they lived together: 

“ And now after having transacted my busi¬ 
ness with the minister, a word or two to the 
man—a character in which, if it is more pleasant 
to you, it is no less pleasant to me to address 
you. I wish you may be passing your time half 
as salubriously and comfortably as I am at 
Gisborne’s, where I am breathing good air, 
eating good mutton, keeping good hours, and 
enjoying the company of good friends. You 
have only two of the four at command, nor 
these always in so pure a state as in Needwood 
Forest; your town mutton being apt to be 
woolly, and your town friends to be interested: 
however, I sincerely believe you are, through 
the goodness of Providence, better off in the 
latter particular, than has been the fate of 
ninety-nine ministers out of a hundred; and as 
for the former, the quantity you lay in may in 
some degree atone for the quality; and it is a 
sign that neither in friends nor mutton you 
have yet lost your taste. Indeed, I shall reckon 
it a bad symptom of your moral or corporal 
state, as the case may be, when your palate is 
so vitiated, that you cannot distinguish the true 
from the false flavour. All this is sad stuff, 
but you must allow us gentlemen who live in 
forests to be a little figurative. I will only add, 
however, (that I may not quite exhaust your 
patience,) that I hope you will never cease to 
relish me, and do me the justice to believe the 
ingredients are good, though you may not alto¬ 
gether approve of the cooking. Yours ever, 

“ W. Wilberforce.” 

P. S. Remember me to all friends. I hope 
you have no more gout, &c. If you will at 
any time give me a line (though it be but a 
mouthful) I shall be glad of it. You will 
think me be-Burked like yourself.” 





20 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


On the occasion of Mr. Pitt’s duel with Mr. 
Tierney, Mr. Wilberforce had designed to 
bring the subject under the notice of the House 
of Commons. The intention was defeated by 
the following kind and characteristic letter: 

“ My dear Wilberforce : 

“ I am not the person to argue with you on a 
subject in which I am a good deal concerned. 
I hope too that I am incapable of doubting 
your kindness to me (however mistaken I 
may think it,) if you let any sentiment of that 
sort actuate you on the present occasion. I 
must suppose that some such feeling has inad¬ 
vertently operated upon you, because whatever 
may be your general sentiments on subjects of 
this nature, they can have acquired no new 
tone or additional argument from any thing 
that has passed in this transaction. You must 
be supposed to bring this forward in reference 
to the individual case. 

“ In doing so, you will be accessary in load- 
one of the parties with unfair and unmerited 
obloquy. With respect to the other party, 
myself, I feel it a real dut}'- to say to you 
frankly that your motion is one for my re¬ 
moval. If any step on the subject is proposed 
in Parliament and agreed to, I shall feel from 
that moment that I c*m be of no more use out 
of office than in it; for in it according to the 
feelings I entertain, I could be of none. I state 
to you, as I think I ought, distinctly and expli¬ 
citly what I feel. I hope I need not repeat 
what I always feel personally to yourself.— 
Your’s ever, William Pitt.” 

“ Downing Street, Wednesday, May 30,1708, 11 P. M.” 

The following passage is worth transcribing 
as a graphic, though slight sketch of Mr. Pitt, 
from the pen of one who knew him so well: 

“ When a statement had been made to the 
house of the cruel practices approaching cer¬ 
tainly to torture, by which the discovery of 
concealed arms had been enforced in Ireland, 
John Claudius Beresford rose to reply, and 
said with a force and honesty, the impression 
of which I never can forget, ‘I fear, and feel 
deep shame in making the avowal—I fear it is 
too true—I defend it not—but I trust I may be 
permitted to refer, as some palliation of these 
atrocities, to the state of my unhappy country, 
where rebellion and its attendant horrors had 
roused on both sides to the highest pitch all 
the strongest passions of our nature.’ I was 
with Pitt in the House of Lords when Lord 
Clare replied to a similar charge—‘ Well, sup¬ 
pose it were so ; but surely,’ '&c. I shall never 
forget Pitt’s look. He turned round to me 
with that indignant stare which sometimes 
marked his countenance, and stalked out of 
the house.” 

It is not generally known that at the period 
of Lord Melville’s trial a coolness almost ap¬ 
proaching to estrangement had arisen between 
that minister and Mr. Pitt. The following ex¬ 
tract from one of Mr. Wilberforce’s Diaries on 
this subject affords an authentic and curious 
illustration of Mr. Pitt’s character: 

“ I had perceived above a year before that 
Lord Melville had not the power over Pitt’s 
mind, which he once possessed. Pitt was 
taking me to Lord Camden’s, and in our tete-a - 


tete he gave me an account of the negotiations 
which had been on foot to induce him to enter 
Addington’s administration. When they quitted 
office in 1801, Dundas proposed taking as his 
motto, Jam rude donatus. Pitt suggested to 
him that having always been an active man, 
he would probably wish again to come into 
office/and then that his having taken such a 
motto would be made a ground for ridicule. 
Dundas assented, and took another motto. 
Addington had not long been in office, before 
Pitt’s expectation was fulfilled, and Dundas 
undertook to bring Pitt into the plan; which 
was to appoint some third person head, and 
bring in Pitt and Addington on equal terms 
under him. Dundas, accordingly, confiding in 
his knowledge of all Pitt’s ways and feelings, 
set out for Walmer Castle; and after dinner, 
and Port wine, began cautiously to open his 
proposals. But he saw it would not do, and 
stopped abruptly. ‘Really,’ said Pitt with a 
sly severity, and it was almost the only sharp 
thing I ever heard him say of any friend, ‘I 
had not the curiosity to ask what I was to be.’ ” 

Amongst the letters addressed to Mr. Wil¬ 
berforce, to be found in these volumes, is one 
written by John Wesley from his death-bed, 
on the day before he sank into the lethargy 
from which he was never roused. They are 
probably the last written words of that extraor¬ 
dinary man. 

“February 24, 1791. 

“ My dear Sir, 

“ Unless Divine power has raised you up to 
be as Athanasius contra mundum, I see not how 
you can go through your glorious enterprise, 
in opposing that execrable villany which is 
the scandal of religion, of England, and of 
human nature. Unless God has raised you up 
for this very thing, you will be worn out by 
the opposition of men and devils; and if God 
be for you, who can be against youl Are all 
of them together stronger than Godl Oh! be 
not weary of well-doing. Go on in the name 
of God, and in the power of his might, till 
even American slavery, the vilest that ever 
saw the sun, shall vanish away before it. 
That He who has guided you from your youth 
up, may continue to strengthen you in this and 
all things, is the prayer of, dear sir, your 
affectionate servant, 

“John Wesley.” 

From a very different correspondent, Jeremy 
Bentham, Mr. Wilberforce received two notes, 
for which, as they are the only examples we 
have seen in print of his epistolary style, we 
must find a place. 

“ Kind Sir, 

“ The next time you happen on Mr. Attorney- 
general in the house or elsewhere, be pleased 
to take a spike—the longer and sharper the 
better—and apply it to him by way of memento , 
that the Penitentiary Contract Bill has, for I 
know not what length of time, been sticking in 
his hands; and you will much oblige your 
humble servant to command. 

“Jeremy Bentham.” 

“ N. B. A corking-pin was, yesterday, applied 
by Mr. Abbot.” 




LIFE OF WILLIAM WILBERFORCE. 


Cl 


“I sympathize with your now happily pro¬ 
mising exertions in behalf of the race of inno¬ 
cents, whose lot it has hitherto been to be 
made the subject-matter of depredation, for the 
purpose of being treated worse than the authors 
of such crimes are treated for those crimes in 
other places.” 

There are, in this work, some occasional 
additions to the stock of political anecdotes. 
Of these we transcribe the following speci¬ 
mens : 

“ Franklin signed the peace of Paris in his 
old spotted velvet coat (it being the time of a 
court-mourning, which rendered it more par¬ 
ticular.) * What,’ said my friend the nego¬ 
tiator, ‘ is the meaning of that harlequin coat V 
‘ It is that in which he was abused by Wedder- 
burne.’ He showed much rancour and per¬ 
sonal enmity to this country—would not grant 
the common passports for trade, which were, 
however, easily got from Jay or Adams. 

“ Dined with Lord Camden ; he, very chatty 
and pleasant. Abused Thurlow for his dupli¬ 
city and mystery. Said the king had said to 
him occasionally he had wished Thurlow and 
Pitt to agree; for that both were necessary to 
him—one in the Lords, the other in the Com¬ 
mons. Thurlow will never do any thing to 
oblige Lord Camden, because he is a friend of 
Pitt’s. Lord Camden himself though he speaks 
of Pitt with evident affection, seems rather to 
complain of his being too much under the in¬ 
fluence of any one who is about him; particu¬ 
larly of Dundas, who prefers his countrymen 
whenever he can.—Lord Camden is sure that 
Lord Bute got money by the peace of Paris. 
He can account for his sinking near £300,000 
in land and houses; and his paternal estate in 
the island which bears his name was not above 
£1500 a-year, and he is a life-tenant only of 
Wortley, which may be £8000 or £10,000. 
Lord Camden does not believe Lord Bute has 
any the least connexion with the king now, 
4 whatever he may have had. Lord Thurlow is 
giving constant dinners to the judges, to gain 
them over to his party, * * * * was applied to 
by * * * *, a wretched sort of dependant of the 
Prince of Wales, to know if he would lend 
him money on the joint bond of the prince and 
dukes of York and Clarence, to receive double 
the sum lent, whenever the king should die, 
and either the Prince of Wales, the dukes of 
York and Clarence, come into the inheritance. 
The sum intended to be raised is £200,000. 

“’Tis only a hollow truce, not a peace, that 
is made between Thurlow and Pitt. I hey 
can have no confidence in each other.” 

It is perhaps the most impressive circum¬ 
stance in Mr. Wilberforce’s character, that the 
lively interest with which he engaged in all 
these political occurrences was combined with 
a consciousness not less habitual or intense 
of their inherent vanity. There is a seeming 
paradox in the solicitude with which he de¬ 
voted so much of his life to secular pursuits, 
and the very light esteem in which he held 
them. The solution of the enigma is to be 
found in his unremitting habits of devotion. 
No man could more scrupulously obey the 
precept which Mr. Taylor has given to his 
i Statesman”— 1 To observe a “ Sabbatical day 


in every week, and a Sabbatical hour in every 
day.” Those days and hours gave him back 
to the world, not merely with recruited energy, 
but in a frame of mind the most favourable to 
the right discharge of its duties. Things in 
themselves the most trivial, wearisome, or 
even offensive, had, in his solitude, assumed a 
solemn interest from their connexion with the 
future destinies of mankind, whilliant and al¬ 
luring objects of human ambition had been 
brought into a humiliating contrast with the 
great ends for which life is given, and with 
the immortal hopes by which it should be sus¬ 
tained. Nothing can be more heartfelt than 
the delight with which he breathed the pure 
air of these devotional retirements. Nothing 
more soothing than the tranquillity which they 
diffused over a mind harassed with the vexa¬ 
tions of a political life. 

Mr. Wilberforce retired from Parliament in 
the year 1825. The remainder of his life was 
passed in the bosom of his family. He did 
not entirely escape those sorrows which so 
usually thicken as the shadows grow long, for 
he survived both his daughters; and, from 
that want of worldly wisdom which always 
characterized him, he lost a very considerable 
part of his fortune in speculations in w r hich he 
had nothing but the gratification of parental 
kindness to gain or to hope. But never were 
such reverses more effectually baffled by the 
invulnerable peace of a cheerful and self- 
approving heart. There were not wanting 
external circumstances which marked the 
change; but the most close and intimate ob¬ 
server could never perceive on his counte¬ 
nance even a passing shade of dejection or 
anxiety on that account. He might, indeed, 
have been supposed to be unconscious that he 
had lost any thing, had not his altered for¬ 
tunes occasionally suggested to him remarks 
on the Divine goodness, by which the seeming 
calamity had been converted into a blessing 
to his children and to himself. It affoi led him 
a w r elcome apology for withdrawing from so¬ 
ciety at large, to gladden, by his almost con¬ 
stant presence,, the homes of his sons by whom 
his life has been recorded. There, surrounded 
by his children and his grandchildren, he 
yielded himself to the current of each succes¬ 
sive inclination; for he had now acquired that 
rare maturity of the moral stature in which 
the conflict between inclination and duty is 
over, and virtue and self-indulgence are the 
same. Some decline of his intellectual powers 
was perceptible to the friends of his earlier 
and more active days; but 

“To things immortal time can do no wrong, 

And that which never is to die, for ever must bo 
young.” 

Looking back with gratitude, sometimes elo¬ 
quent, but more often from the depth of the 
emotion faltering on the tongue, to his long 
career of usefulness, of honour, and enjoy¬ 
ment, he watched with grave serenity the ebb 
of the current w r hich w r as fast bearing him to 
his eternal reward. He died in his seventy 
fifth year, in undisturbed tranquillity, after a 
very brief illness, and without any indication 
of bodily suffering. He was buried in West¬ 
minster Abbey, in the presence of a large 




22 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


number of the members of both Houses of 
Parliament; nor was the solemn ritual of the 
church ever pronounced over the grave of any 
of her children with more affecting or more 
appropriate truth. Never was recited, on a 
more fit occasion, the sublime benediction— 
“I heard a voice from heaven, saying, Write, 
blessed are the dead who die in the Lord, for 
they rest from their labours, and their works 
do follow them.” 

The volumes to which we have been chiefly 
indebted for this very rapid epitome of some 
of the events of Mr. Wilberforce’s life, will 
have to undergo a severe ordeal. There are 
numberless persons who assert a kind of pro¬ 
perty in his reputation, and who will resent as 
almost a personal wrong any exhibition of his 
character which may fall short of their de¬ 
mands. We believe, however, though not 
esteeming ourselves the best possible judges, 
that even this powerful party will be satisfied. 
They will find in this portraiture of their great 
leader much to fulfil their expectations. Im¬ 
partial judges will, we think, award to the 
book the praise of fidelity, and diligence, and 
unaffected modesty. Studiously withdrawing 
themselves from the notice of their readers, 
the biographers of Mr. Wilberforce have not j 
sought occasion to display the fruits of their 
theological or literary studies. Their taste 
has been executed with ability, and with deep 
affection. No one can read such a narrative 
without interest, and many will peruse it with 
enthusiasm. It contains several extracts from 
Mr. Wilberforce’s speeches and throws much 
occasional light on the political history of 
England during the last half century. It 


| brings us into acquaintance with a circle in 
which were projected and matured many of 
the great schemes of benevolence by which 
I our age has been distinguished, and shows 
how partial is the distribution of renown in 
the world in which we are living. A more 
equal dispensation of justice w r ould have 
awarded a far more conspicuous place amongst 
the benefactors of mankind to the names of 
Mr. Stephen and Mr. Macaulay, than has ever 
yet been assigned to them. 

Biography, considered as an art, has been 
destroyed by the greatest of all biographers, 
James Boswell. His success must be for¬ 
gotten before Plutarch or Isaac Walton will 
find either rivals or imitators. Yet memoirs, 
into which every thing illustrative of the cha¬ 
racter or fortunes of the person to be described 
is drawn, can never take a permanent place in 
literature, unless the hero be himself as pic 
turesque as Johnson, nor unless the writer be 
gifted with the dramatic powers of Boswell. 
Mr. Wilberforce was an admirable subject for 
graphic sketches in this style ; but the hand of 
a son could not have drawn them without im¬ 
propriety, and they have never been delineated 
by others. A tradition, already fading, alone 
I preserves the memory of those social powers 
which worked as a spell on every one who 
approached him, and drew from Madame de 
Stacl the declaration that he was the most 
eloquent and the wittiest converser she had 
met in England. But the memory of his in¬ 
fluence in the councils of the state, of his holy 
character, and of his services to mankind, 
rests upon an imperishable basis, and will de¬ 
scend with honour to the latest times. 


TIIE LIVES OF WHITFIELD AND FROUDE.* 

[Edinburgh Review, 1838.] 


If the enemies of Christianity in the com¬ 
mencement of the last century failed to accom¬ 
plish its overthrow, they -were at least suc¬ 
cessful in producing what at present appears 
to have been a strange and unreasonable 
panic. Middleton, Bolingbroke, and Mande- 
ville, have now lost their terrors; and (in com¬ 
mon with the heroes of the Dunciad) Chubb, 
Toland, Collins, and Woolston, are remem¬ 
bered only on account of the brilliancy of the 
Auto-da-fe at which they suffered. To these 
wwiters, however, belongs the credit of having 
suggested to Clarke his inquiries inlo the 
elementary truth on which all religion de¬ 
pends ; and by them Warburton wans provoked 
to “ demonstrate” the Divine legation of Moses. 
They excited Newton to explore the fulfilment 
of prophecy, and Lardner to accumulate the 


* The Life and Times of the Rev. George Whitfield, 
M . A . By Robert Philip. 8vo. London, 1838. 

Remains of the Rev. Richard Hurrell Froude, J\I. A. 
Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 

1838„ 


proofs of the credibility of the Gospels. A 
greater than any of these, Joseph Butler, was 
induced, by the same adversaries, to investi¬ 
gate the analogy of natural and revealed reli¬ 
gion, and Berkeley and Sherlock, with a long 
catalogue of more obscure names, crowded to 
the rescue of the menaced citadel of the faith. 
But in this anxiety to strengthen its defences, 
the garrison not only declined to attempt new 
conquests, but withdrew from much of their 
ancient dominion. In this its apologetic age, 
English theology w r as distinguished by an un¬ 
wonted timidity and coldness. The alliance 
which it had maintained from the days of Jew r el 
to those of Leighton, with philosophy and elo¬ 
quence, wuth wit and poetry, w r as dissolved. 
Taylor and Hall, Donne and Hooker, Baxter 
and Howe, had spoken as men having autho¬ 
rity, and with an unclouded faith in their di¬ 
vine mission. In that confidence they had 
grappled with every difficulty, and had wielded 
with equal energy and ease all the resources 
of genius and of learning. Alternately search- 







23 


THE LIVES OF WHITFIELD AND FROUDE. 


ing the depths of the heart, and playing over 
the mere surface of the mind, they relieved 
the subtleties of logic by a quibble or a pun, 
and illuminated, by intense flashes of wit, the 
metaphysical abysses which it was their de¬ 
light to tread. Even when directing the spirit¬ 
ual affections to their highest exercise, they 
hazarded any quaint conceit which crossed 
their path, and yielded to every impulse of 
fancy or of passion. But divinity was no 
longer to retain the foremost place in English 
literature. The Tillotsons and Seekers of a 
later age were alike distrustful of their read¬ 
ers and of themselves. Tame, cautious, and 
correct, they rose above the Tatlers and Spec¬ 
tators of their times, because on such themes 
it was impossible to be frivolous; but they can 
be hardly said to have contributed as largely 
as Steele and Addison to guide the opinions, 
or to form the character of their generation. 

This depression of theology was aided by 
the state of political parties under the two first 
princes of the house of Brunswick. Low and 
high church were but other names for whigs 
and tories ; and while Hoadley and Atterbury 
wrangled about the principles of the revolu¬ 
tion, the sacred subjects which formed the pre¬ 
text of their disputes were desecrated in the 
feelings of the multitude, who witnessed and 
enjoyed the controversy. Secure from farther 
persecution, and deeply attached to the new 
order of things, the dissenters were no longer 
roused to religious zeal by invidious secular 
distinctions; and Doddington and Watts la¬ 
mented the decline of their congregations 
from the standard of their ancient piety. The 
former victims of bigotry had become its pro¬ 
selytes, and -anathemas were directed against 
the pope and the pretender, with still greater 
acrimony than against the evil one, with 
whom good protestants of all denominations 
associated them. 

The theology of any age at once ascertains 
and regulates its moral stature; and, at the 
period of which we speak, the austere virtues 
of the Puritans, and the more meek and social, 
though not less devout spirit of the worthies 
of the Church of England, if still to be detected 
in the recesses of private life, were discounte¬ 
nanced by the general habits of society. The 
departure of the more pure and generous in¬ 
fluences of earlier times may be traced no 
where more clearly than in those works of fic¬ 
tion, in which the prevailing profligacy of 
manners was illustrated by Fielding, Sterne, 
and Smollet; and proved, though with more 
honest purposes, by Richardson and Defoe. 

It was at this period that the Alma Maler of 
Laud and Sacheverel was nourishing in her 
bosom a little band of pupils destined to ac¬ 
complish a momentous revolution in the na¬ 
tional character. Wesley had already attained 
the dawn of manhood when, in 1714, his fu¬ 
ture rival and coadjutor, George Whitfield, 
was born at a tavern in Gloucester, of which 
his father was the host. The death of the 
elder Whitfield within two years from that 
time, left the child to the care of his mother, 
who took upon herself the management of the 
“ Bell Inn though as her son has gratefully 
recorded, she “ prudently kept him, in his ten¬ 


der years, from intermeddling with the tavern 
business.” In such a situation he almost in¬ 
evitably fell into vices and follies, which have 
been exaggerated as much by the vehemence 
ol his own confessions, as by the malignity of 
his enemies. They exhibit some curious in¬ 
dications of his future character. He robbed 
his mother, but part of the monej r was given 
to the poor. He stole books, but they were 
books of devotion. Irritated by the unlucky 
tricks of his play-fellows, who, he says, in the 
language of David, “compassed him about 
like bees,” he converted into a prayer the pro¬ 
phetic imprecation of the Psalmist—■“ In the 
name of the Lord I will destroy them.” The 
mind in which devotional feelings and bad 
passions were thus strongly knit together, was 
consigned in early youth, to the culture of the 
master of the grammar-school of St. Mary de 
Crypt, in his native city; and there were given 
the first auspices of his future eminence. He 
studied the English dramatic writers, and re¬ 
presented their female characters with ap¬ 
plause ; and when the mayor and aldermen 
were to be harangued by one of the scholars, 
the embryo field-preacher was selected to extol 
the merits, and to gratify the tastes of their 
worships. His erratic propensities were de¬ 
veloped almost as soon as his powers of elocu¬ 
tion. Wearied with the studies of the grammar- 
school, he extorted his mother’s reluctan' 
consent to return to the tavern; and there, he 
says, “ I put on my blue apron and my snuffers, 
washed mops, cleaned rooms, and, in one word, 
became professed and common drawer for 
nigh a year and a half.” The tapster was, of 
course, occasionally tipsy, and always in re¬ 
quest; but as even the flow of the tap may not 
be perennial, he found leisure to compose ser¬ 
mons, and stole from the night some hours for 
the study of the Bible. 

At the Bell Inn there dwelt a sister-in-law 
of Whitfield’s, with whom it was his fortune 
or his fault to quarrel; and to sooth his trou¬ 
bled spirit he “ would retire and weep before 
the Lord, as Hagar when flying from Sarah.” 
From the presence of this Sarah he accord¬ 
ingly fled to Bristol, and betook himself to the 
study of Thomas a Kempisj but returning 
once more to Gloucester, exchanged divinity 
for the drama, and then abandoned the dra¬ 
matists for his long neglected school-books. 
For now had opened a prospect inviting him 
to the worthy use of those talents which might 
otherwise have been consumed in sordid occu¬ 
pations, or in some obscure and fruitless 
efforts to assert his native superiority to other 
men. Intelligence had reached his mother 
that admission might be obtained at Pembroke 
College, Oxford, for her capricious and thought¬ 
ful boy; and the intuitive wisdom of a mother’s 
love assured her that through this avenue he 
might advance to distinction, if not to fortune. 

A few more oscillations between dissolute 
tastes and heavenward desires, and the youth 
finally gained the mastery over his lower ap¬ 
petites. From his seventeenth year to his 
dying day he lived amongst imbittered ene¬ 
mies and jealous friends, without a stain on 
his reputation. 

In 1731 the gates of Pembroke College had 





24 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


finally closed on the rude figure of one of her 
illustrious sons, expelled by poverty to seek a 
precarious subsistence, and to earn a lasting 
reputation in the obscure alleys of London. 
In the following year they were opened to a 
pupil as ill provided with this world’s wealth 
as Samuel Johnson, but destined to achieve a 
still more extensive and a more enduring cele¬ 
brity. The waiter at the Bell Inn had become 
a servitor at Oxford—no great advancement in 
the social scale according to the habits of that 
age—yet a change which conferred the means 
of elevation on a mind too ardent to leave 
them unimproved. He became the associate 
of Charles, and the disciple of John Wesley, 
who had at that time taken as their spiritual 
guide the celebrated mystic, William Law. 
These future chiefs of a religious revolution 
were then “ interrogating themselves whether 
they had been simple and recollected; whether 
they had prayed with fervour Monday, Wednes¬ 
day, and Friday, and on Saturday noon; if they 
had used a collect at nine, twelve, and three 
o’clock; duly meditated on Sunday from three 
to four on Thomas a Kempis, or mused on 
Wednesday and Friday from twelve to one on 
the Passion.” But Quietism, indigenous in 
the East, is an exotic in this cold and busy 
land of ours, bearing at the best but sorry 
fruit, and hastening to a premature decay. 
Never was mortal man less fitted for the con¬ 
templative state than George Whitfield. It 
was an attempt as hopeless as that of con¬ 
verting a balloon into an observatory. He 
dressed the character indeed to admiration, 
for “he thought it unbecoming a penitent to 
have his hair powdered, and wore woollen 
gloves, a patched gown, and dirty shoes.” But 
the sublime abstractions which should people 
the cell and haunt the spirit of the hermit he 
wooed in vain. In the hopeless attempt to do 
nothing but meditate, “the power of medi¬ 
tating or even of thinking w r as,” he says, 
“ taken from him.” Castanza on the “ Spi¬ 
ritual Combat” advised him to talk but little; 
and “ Satan said he must not talk at all.” The 
Divine Redeemer had been surrounded in his 
temptations by deserts and wild beasts, and to 
approach this example as closely as the loca¬ 
lities allowed, Whitfield was accustomed to 
select Christ Church meadow as the scene, 
and a stormy night as the time of his mental 
conflicts. He prostrated his body on the bare 
earth, fasted during Lent, and exposed himself 
to the cold till his hands began to blacken, 
and •“ by abstinence and inward struggles so 
emaciated his body as to be scarcely able to 
creep up stairs.” In this deplorable state he 
received from the Wesleys books and ghostly 
counsels. His tutor, more -wisely, sent him a 
physician, and for seven weeks he laboured 
under a severe illness. It was, in his own 
language, “ a glorious visitation.” It gave 
him time and composure to make a written 
record and a penitent confession of his youth¬ 
ful sins—to examine the New Testament; to 
read Bishop’s Hall’s Contemplations; and to 
seek by prayer for wisdom and for peace. 
The blessings thus invoked were not denied. 
“ The day-star,” he says, “ arose in my heart. 
The spirit of mourning was taken from me. 


For some time I could not avoid singing 
Psalms wherever I was, but my joy became 
gradually more settled. Thus were the days 
of my mourning ended.” 

And thus also was ended his education.— 
Before the completion of his twenty-first year, 
Whitfield returned to Gloucester; and such 
was the fame of his piety and talents, that Dr. 
Benson, the then bishop of the diocess, offered 
to dispense, in his favour, with the rule which 
forbade the ordination of deacons at so unripe 
an age. The mental agitation which preceded 
his acceptance of this proposal, is described 
in these strange but graphic terms in one of 
his latest sermons. 

“I never prayed against any corruption I 
had in my life so much as I did against going 
into holy orders so soon as my friends were 
for having me go. Bishop Benson was pleased 
to honour me with peculiar friendship, so as 
to offer me preferment, or to do any thing for 
me. My friends wanted me to mount the 
church betimes. They wanted me to knock 
my head against the pulpit too young, but how 
some young men stand up here and there and 
preach, I do not know. However it be to them, 
God know./ how deep a concern entering into 
the ministry and preaching was to me. I have 
prayed a thousand times, till the sweat has 
dropped from my face like rain, that God of 
his infinite mercy would not let me enter into 
the church till he called me to and thrust me 
forth in his work. I remember once in Glou¬ 
cester, I know the room; I look up to the win¬ 
dow when I am there, and walk along the 
street. I know the wdndow upon which I have 
laid prostrate. I said, Lord, I cannot go, I 
shall be puffed up with pride, and fall into the 
condemnation of the devil. Lord, do not let 
me go yet. I pleaded to be at Oxford two or 
three years more. I intended to make one 
hundred and fifty sermons, and thought that I 
would set up with a good stock in trade. I 
remember praying, wrestling, and striving 
with God. I said, I am undone. I am unfit 
to preach in thy great name. Send me not, 
Lord—send me not yet. I wrote to all my 
friends in town and country to pray against 
the bishop’s solicitation, but they insisted I 
should go into orders before I was twenty- 
two. After all their solicitations, these words 
came into my mind, ‘ Nothing shall pluck you 
out of my hands;’ they came warm to my 
heart. Then, and not till then, I said, ‘ Lord, I 
will go; send me when thou wilt.’ He was 
ordained accordingly; and ‘when the bishop 
laid his hands upon my head, my heart,’ he 
says, ‘was melted down, and I offered up my 
whole spirit, soul, and body.’ ” 

A man within whose bosom resides an ora¬ 
cle directing his steps in the language and 
with the authority of inspiration, had needs be 
thus self-devoted in soul and body to some 
honest purpose, if he would not mistake the 
voice of the Pythoness for that which issues 
from the sanctuary. But the uprightness and 
inflexible constancy of Whitfield’s character 
rendered even its superstitions comparatively 
harmless; and the sortilege w r as ever in favour 
of some new effort to accomplish the single 
object for w^hich he henceforward lived. The 




25 


THE LIVES OF WHITFIELD AND FROUDE. 


next words which “came to his soul with 
power” were “Speak out, Paul,” and never 
was injunction more strictly obeyed. 

“Immediately,” he says, “my heart was 
enlarged, and I preached on the Sunday morn¬ 
ing to a very crowded audience with as much 
freedom as if I had been a preacher for some 
years. As I proceeded I perceived the fire 
kindled, till at last, though so young, and 
amidst a crowd of those who knew me in my 
infant childish days, I trust I was enabled to 
speak with some degree of gospel authority. 
Some few mocked, but most for the present 
seemed struck, and I have heard since that a 
complaint had been made to the bishop that I 
drove fifteen mad by my first sermon. The 
worthy prelate, as I am informed, wished that 
the madness might not be forgotten before 
next Sunday.” 

Thus early apprized of the secret of his 
strength, his profound aspirations for the 
growth of Christianity, the delight of exer¬ 
cising his rare powers, and the popular admi¬ 
ration which rewarded them, operating with 
combined and ceaseless force on a mind im¬ 
patient of repose, urged him into exertions, 
which, if not attested by irrefragable proofs, 
might appear incredible and fabulous. It was 
the statement of one who knew him well, and 
who was incapable of wilful exaggeration— 
and it is confirmed by his letters, journals, and 
a whole cloud of witnesses—that “ in the com¬ 
pass of a single week, and that for years, he 
spoke in general forty hours, and in very 
many sixty, and that to thousands; and after 
his labours, instead of taking any rest, he was 
engaged in offering up prayers and interces¬ 
sions, with hymns and spiritual songs, as his 
manner was, in every house to which he was 
invited.” 

Given, a preacher, who during the passage 
of the sun though the ecliptic, addresses his 
audience every seventh day, in two discourses 
of the dwarfish size to which sermons attain 
in this degenerate age, and multiply his efforts 
by forty, and you do not reach the standard 
by w’hich, for thirty-five successive years, 
Whitfield regulated this single branch of his 
exertions. Combine this with the fervour 
with which he habitually spoke, the want of 
all aids to the voice in the fields and the tho¬ 
roughfares he frequented, and the toil of be¬ 
coming distinctly audible to thousands and 
tens of thousands; and, considered merely as a 
physical phenomenon, the result is amongst 
the most curious of all well authenticated 
marvels. If the time spent in travelling from 
place to place, and some brief intervals of 
repose be subtracted, his whole life may be 
said to have been consumed in the delivery of 
one continuous or scarcely uninterrupted ser¬ 
mon. Strange as is such an example of bodily 
and mental energy, still stranger is the power 
he possessed of fascinating the attention of 
hearers of every rank of life and of every va¬ 
riety of understanding. Not only were the 
loom, the forge, the plough, the collieries, and 
the workshops, deserted at his approach, but 
the spell was acknowledged by Hume and 
Franklin—by Pulteney, Bolingbroke, and Ches¬ 
terfield—by maids of honour and lords of the 


bed-chamber. Such indeed was its force, that 
when the scandal could be concealed behind a 
well adjusted curtain, “e’en mitred ‘auditors’ 
would nod the head.” Neither English reserve, 
nor the theological discrimination of the 
Scotch, nor the callous nerves of the slave- 
dealers of America, nor the stately self-pos¬ 
session of her aborigines, could resist the en¬ 
chantment. Never was mortal man gifted 
with such an incapacity of fatiguing or of 
being fatigued. 

No similar praise could be honestly awarded 
to Whitfield’s present biographer. lie has 
followed the steps of the great itinerant from 
the cradle to the grave, in a volume of nearly 
six hundred closely printed pages, compiled 
on the principle that nothing can be super¬ 
fluous in the narrative of a man’s life which 
was of any real importance to the man him¬ 
self, or to his associates. The chronicle so 
drawn up, illuminated by no gleams of philo¬ 
sophy, human or divine, and arranged on no 
intelligible method, is a sore exercise for the 
memory and the patience of the reader. It 
records, without selection or forbearance, thir¬ 
teen successive voyages across the Atlantic— 
pilgrimages incalculable to every part of this 
island, and of the North American continent, 
from Georgia to Boston—controversies with 
Wesley on predestination and perfection, and 
with the bishops on still deeper mysteries— 
chapel buildings and subscriptions—preach¬ 
ings and the excitement which followed them 
—and characteristic sayings and uncharacter¬ 
istic letters, meetings and partings, and every 
other incident, great and small, which has 
been preserved by the oral or written tradi¬ 
tions of Whitfield’s followers. His life still 
remains to be written by some one who shall 
bring to the task other qualifications than an 
honest zeal for his fame, and a cordial adop¬ 
tion of his opinions. 

From the conflict with the enemies who 
had threatened her existence, the church mili¬ 
tant turned to resist the unwelcome ally who 
now menaced her repose. Warburton led the 
van, and behind him many a mitred front 
scowled on the audacious innovator. Divested 
of the logomachies which chiefly engaged the 
attention of the disputants, the controversy 
between Whitfield and the bishops lay in a 
narrow compass. It being mutually conceded 
that the virtues of the Christian life can result 
only from certain divine impulses, and that to 
lay a claim to this holy inspiration when its 
legitimate fruits are wanting, is a fatal delu¬ 
sion ; he maintained, and they denied, that the 
person who is the subject of this sacred influ¬ 
ence has within his own bosom an independent 
attestation of its reality. So abstruse a debate 
required the zest of some more pungent ingre¬ 
dients ; and the polemics with whom Whitfield 
had to do, were not such sciolists in their call¬ 
ing as to be ignorant of the necessity of rivet¬ 
ing upon him some epithet at once oppro¬ 
brious and vague. While, therefore, milder 
spirits arraigned him as an enthusiast, War- 
burton, with constitutional energy of invective, 
denounced him as a fanatic. In vain he de¬ 
manded a definition of these reproachful terms. 
To have fixed their meaning would have been 

C 



26 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


to blunt their edge. They afforded a solution 
at once compendious, obscure, and repulsive, 
of whatever was remarkable in his character, 
and have accompanied his name from that 
time to the present. 

The currents of life had drifted Warburton 
on divinity as his profession, but nature de¬ 
signed him for a satirist; and the propensity 
was too strong to yield even to the study of 
the gospel. From them he might have disco¬ 
vered the injustice of his censure; for the real 
nature of religious fanaticism can be learnt 
with equal clearness from no other source. 
They tell of men who compassed sea and land 
to make one proselyte, that when made they 
might train him up as a persecutor and a 
bigot; of others, who erected sepulchral monu¬ 
ments to the martyrs of a former age, while 
unsheathing the sword which was to augment 
their number; of some who would have called 
down fire from heaven to punish the inhospi¬ 
table city which rejected their master; and of 
those who exhausted their bodies with fasting, 
and their minds with study, that they might 
with deeper emphasis curse the ignorant mul¬ 
titude. They all laboured under a mental dis¬ 
ease, which, amongst fanatics of every gene¬ 
ration, has assumed the same distinctive type. 
It consists in an unhallowed alliance of the 
morose and vindictive passions with devotion 
or religious excitement. Averting the mental 
vision from what is cheerful, affectionate, and 
animating in piety, the victims of this malady 
regard opposing sects, not as the children, but 
as the enemies of God; and while looking in¬ 
ward with melancholy alternations of pride 
and self-reproach, learn to contemplate Deity 
itself with but half-suppressed aversion. To 
connect the name of the kind hearted George 
Whitfield with such a reproach as this! To 
call on the indolent of all future generations 
who should bel eve in Warburton, to associate 
the despised itinerant with the Dominies, De 
Ranees, and Bonners of former ages ! Truly 
the indignant prelate knew not what manner 
of spirit he was of. If ever philanthropy 
burned in the human heart with a pure and 
intense flame, embracing the whole family of 
man in the spirit of universal charity, that 
praise is pre-eminently due to Whitfield. His 
predestinarian speculations perplexed his mind, 
but could not check the expansion of his Ca¬ 
tholic feelings. “He loved the world that 
hated him.” He had no preferences but in 
favour of the ignorant, the miserable, and the 
poor. In their cause he shrunk from no pri¬ 
vation, and declined neither insult nor hosti¬ 
lity. To such wrongs he opposed the wea¬ 
pons of an all-enduring meekness, and a love 
incapable of repulse. The springs of his bene¬ 
volence were inexhaustible, and could not 
choose but flow. Assisted it may have been 
by natural disposition, and by many an exter¬ 
nal impulse; but it ultimately reposed on the 
fixed persuasion that he was engaged in a 
sacred duty, the faithful discharge of which 
would be followed by an imperishable recom¬ 
pense. With whatever undigested subtleties 
his religious creed was encumbered, they 
could not hide from him, though they might 
obscure the truth, that, between the virtues of 


this life and the rewards of a future state, the 
connexion is necessary and indissoluble. Re¬ 
ferring this retributive dispensation exclu¬ 
sively to the divine benevolence, his theology 
inculcated humility while it inspired hope. 
It taught him self-distrust, and reliance on a 
strength superior to his own; and instructed 
him in the mystery which reconciles the ele¬ 
vation and the purity of disinterested love with 
those lower motives of action which more 
immediately respect the future advantage of 
the agent. Whatever else Whitfield may have 
been, a fanatic, in the proper sense of that 
term, he assuredly was not. 

The charge of enthusiasm was so ambigu¬ 
ous, that it might, with equal propriety, be un¬ 
derstood as conveying either commendation or 
reproach. Hope is the element in which all 
the great men of the world move and have 
their being. Engaged in arduous and lofty 
designs, they must, to a certain extent, live in 
an imaginary world, and recruit their exhaust¬ 
ed strength with ideal prospects of the success 
which is to repay their labours. But, like 
every other emotion when long indulged, hope 
yields but a precarious obedience to the reason¬ 
ing powers; and reason, herself, even when 
most enlightened, will not seldom make a vo¬ 
luntary abdication of her sovereignty in favour 
of her powerful minister;—surrendering up to 
the guidance of impulse a mind whose aims 
are too high to be fulfilled under her own sober 
counsels. For in “ this little state of man” 
the passions must be the free subjects, not the 
slaves of the understanding; and while they 
obey her precepts, should impart to her some 
of their own spirit, warmth, and energy. It is 
however, essential to a well constituted na¬ 
ture, that the subordination of the lower to the 
superior faculties, though occasionally relaxed, 
should be habitually maintained. Used with 
due abstinence, hope acts as a healthful tonic; 
intemperately indulged, as an enervating opiate. 
The visions of future triumph, which at first 
animated exertion, if dwelt upon too intently, 
will usurp the place of the stern reality, anu 
noble objects will be contemplated, not for 
their own inherent worth, but on account of 
the day dreams they engender. Thus, imagi¬ 
nation makes one man a hero, another a som¬ 
nambulist, and a third a lunatic: while it 
renders them all enthusiasts. And thus are 
classed together, under one generic term, cha¬ 
racters wide asunder as the poles, and stand¬ 
ing at the top and at the bottom of the scale 
of human intellect; and the same epithet is 
used to describe Francis Bacon and Emanuel 
Swedenborg. 

Religious men are, for obvious reasons, 
more subject than others to enthusiasm, both 
in its invigorating and in its morbid forms. 
They are aware that there is about their path 
and about their bed a real presence, which yet 
no sense attests. They revere a spiritual in¬ 
mate of the soul, of whom they have no definite 
conciousness. They live in communion with 
one, whose nature is chiefly defined by nega¬ 
tives. They are engaged in duties which can 
be performed acceptably only at the bidding 
of the deepest affections. They rest their faith 
on prophetic and miraculous suspensions, in 



27 


THE LIVES OF WHITFIELD AND FROUDE. 


times past, of the usual course of nature; and 
derive their hopes and fears from the dim sha¬ 
dows cast by things eternal on the troubled 
mirror of this transient scene. What wonder 
if, under the incumbent weight of such thoughts 
as these, the course of active virtue be too 
often arrested ; or if a religious romance some¬ 
times takes the place of contemplative piety, 
and the fictitious gradually supersedes the 
real; and a world of dreams, a system of opi¬ 
nions, and a code of morals, which religion dis¬ 
avows, occasionally shed their narcotic influ¬ 
ence over a spirit excited and oppressed by the 
shapeless forms and the fearful powers with 
which it is conversant? 

Both in the more and in the less favourable 
sense of the expression, Whitfield was an en¬ 
thusiast. The thraldom of the active to the 
meditative powers was indeed abhorrent from 
his nature; but he was unable to maintain a 
just equilibrium between them. His life was 
one protracted calenture; and the mental fever 
discoloured and distorted the objects of his 
pursuits. Without intellectual discipline or 
sound learning, he confounded his narrow 
range of elementary topics with the compre¬ 
hensive scheme and science of divinity. 
Leaping over the state of pupilage, he became 
at once a teacher and a dogmatist. The les¬ 
sons which he never drew from books, were 
never taught him by men. He allowed him¬ 
self no leisure for social intercourse with his 
superiors, or with his equals; but underwent 
the debilitating effects of conversing almost 
exclusively with those who sat as disciples at 
his feet. Their homage, and the impetuous 
tumult of his career, left him but superficially 
acquainted with himself. Unsuspicious of his 
own ignorance, and exposed to flattery far 
more intoxicating than the acclamations of the 
theatre, he laid the foundations of a new reli¬ 
gious system with less of profound thought, 
and in a greater penury of theological research, 
than had ever fallen to the lot of a reformer or 
heresiarch before. The want of learning was 
concealed under the dazzling veil of popular 
eloquence, and supplied by the assurance of 
divine illumination; and the spiritual influence 
on which he thus relied was little else than a 
continually recurring miracle. It was not a 
power like that which acts throughout the 
material world — the unseen and inaudible 
source of life, sustaining, cementing, and in¬ 
vigorating all things, hiding itself from the 
heedless beneath the subordinate agency it 
employs, and disclosed to the thoughtful by 
his prolific and plastic energies. The access 
of the Sacred presence, which Whitfield ac¬ 
knowledged, was perceptible by an inward 
consciousness, and was not merely different, 
but distinguishable from the movements of 
that intellectual and sensitive mechanism of 
his own nature, by means of which it operated. 
He discerned it not only in the growth of the 
active and passive virtues and in progressive 
strength and wisdom and peace, but in sudden 
impulses which visited his bosom, and unex¬ 
pected suggestions which directed his path. A 
truth of all others the most consolatory and the 
most awful, was thus degraded almost to a 
level with superstitions, which, in their naked 


form, no man would have more vehemently 
disclaimed; and the great mystery which 
blends together the human and the divine in 
the Christian dispensation, lost much of its 
sublime character, and with it much of its 
salutary influence. 

It was indeed impossible that a mincl feed¬ 
ing upon such visions as he invited and 
cherished should entirely escape their practi¬ 
cal mischief. He would have rejected with 
horror the impious dream that the indwelling 
Deity would absolve him from any obligation 
of justice, mercy, or truth. Yet he could per¬ 
suade himself that he enjoyed a dispensation 
from the duty of canonical obedience to his 
ecclesiastical superiors. His revolt against 
the authority of the church of which he was a 
presbyter is at once avowed and defended by 
his present biographer. “If,” he says, “a 
bishop did good or allowed good to be done, 
Whitfield venerated him and his office too; 
but he despised both whenever they were hos¬ 
tile to truth or zeal—I have no objection to 
say, whenever they were hostile to his own 
sentiments and measures. What honest rnan 
would respect an unjust judge, or an ignorant 
physician, because of their professional titles ? 
It is high time to put an end to this nonsense.” 

Mr. Philip’s boast is not, or at least should 
not be, that he is well found in the principles 
of casuistry. He is no Ductor Dubitantium, 
but a spiritual pugilist, who uses his pen as a 
cudgel. But, whatever may be the value of 
hard words, they are not sufficient to adjust 
such a question as this. Under sanctions of 
the most awful solemnity, Whitfield had bound 
himself to submit to the lawful commands of 
his bishop. His “measures,” being opposed 
to the law ecclesiastical, were interdicted by 
his diocesan; but, his “sentiments” telling 
him that he was right, and the bishop wrong, 
the vow of obedience was, it seems, cancelled. 
If so, it was but an impious mockery to make 
or to receive it. If it be really “ nonsense” to 
respect so sacred an engagement, then is there 
less sense than has usually been supposed in 
good faith and plain dealing. Even on the 
hazardous assumption that the allegiance 
voluntarily assumed by the clergy of the An¬ 
glican church is dissoluble at the pleasure of 
the inferior party, it is at least evident that, as 
an honest man, Whitfield was bound to aban¬ 
don the advantages when he repudiated the 
duties of the relation in which he stood to his 
bishop. But, “ despising” the episcopal office, 
he still kept his station in the episcopal church; 
and, if he had no share in her emoluments, 
continued at least to enjoy the rank, the wor¬ 
ship, and the influence which attend her mi¬ 
nisters. In the midst of his revolt he per¬ 
formed her offices, and ministered in her tem¬ 
ples, as often as opportunity offered. It was 
the dishonest proceeding of a good man bewil¬ 
dered by dreams of the special guidance of a 
Divine Monitor. The apology is the error of 
an honest man led astray by a sectarian spirit 

The sinister influence of Whitfield’s imagi¬ 
nation on his opinions, and through them on 
his conduct may be illustrated by another 
example. He not only became the purchaser 
of slaves, but condemned the restriction which 




23 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


at that time forbade their introduction into 
Georgia. There is extant, in his handwriting, 
an inventory of the effects at the Orphan 
House, in that province, in which these mise¬ 
rable captives take their place between the 
cattle and the carts.’ “ Blessed be God,” he 
exclaimed, “for the increase of the negroes. 
I entirely approve of reducing the Orphan 
House as low as possible, and I am determined 
to take no more than the plantation will main¬ 
tain till I can buy more negroes.” It is true 
that it was only as founder of this asylum for 
destitute children that he made these pur¬ 
chases; and true, that in these wretched bonds¬ 
men he recognised immortal beings for whose 
eternal welfare he laboured; and it is also 
true that the morality of his age was lax on 
the subject. But the American Quakers were 
already bearing testimony against the guilt of 
slavery and the slave trade; and even had 
they been silent, so eminent a teacher of 
Christianity as Whitfield, could not, without 
censure, have so far descended from Scriptu¬ 
ral to conventional virtue. 

To measure such a man as George Whit¬ 
field by the standards of refined society might 
seem a very strange, if not a ludicrous attempt. 
Yet, as Mr. Philip repeatedly, and with em¬ 
phasis, ascribes to him the character of a 
“gentleman,” it must be stated that he was 
guilty of high crimes and misdemeanours 
against the laws of that aristocratic common¬ 
wealth in which the assertion of social equality, 
and the nice observance of the privileges of 
sex and rank, are so curiously harmonized. 
Such was his want of animal courage, that in 
the vigour of his days he could tamely acqui¬ 
esce in a severe personal chastisement, and 
fly to the hold of his vessel for safety at the 
prospect of an approaching sea-fight. Such 
was his failure in self-respect, that a tone of 
awkward adulation distinguishes his letters to 
the ladies of high degree who partook and 
graced his triumph. But his capital offence 
against the code of manners was the absence 
of that pudicity which shrinks from exposing 
to public gaze the deepest emotions of the 
heart. In journals originally divulged, and at 
last published by himself, and throughout his 
voluminous correspondence, he is “ naked and 
is not ashamed.” Some very coarse elements 
must have entered into the composition of a 
man who could thus scatter abroad disclo¬ 
sures of the secret communings of his spirit 
with his Maker. 

Akin to this fault is his seeming uncon¬ 
sciousness of the oppressive majesty of the. 
topics with which he was habitually occupied. 
The seraph in the prophetic vision was ar¬ 
rayed with wings, of which some were given 
to urge his flight, and others to cover his face. 
Vigorous as were the pinions with which 
Whitfield moved, he appears to have been un¬ 
provided with those beneath which his eyes 
should have shrunk from too familiar a cor- 
templation of the ineffable glory. Where 
prophets and apostles “stood trembling,” he 
is at his ease; where they adored, he declaims. 
This is, indeed, one of the besetting sins of 
licentiates in divinity. But few ever moved 
among the infinitudes and eternities of invisi¬ 


ble things with less embarrassment or with 
less of silent awe. Illustrations might be 
drawn from every part of his writings, but 
hardly without committing the irreverence we 
condemn. 

To the lighter graces of taste and fancy 
Whitfield had no pretension. He wandered 
from shore to shore unobservant of the won¬ 
ders of art and nature, and the strange varieties 
of men and manners which solicited his no¬ 
tice. In sermons in which no resource within 
its reach is neglected, there is scarcely a trace 
to be found of such objects having met his eye 
or arrested his attention. The poetry of the 
inspired volume awakens in him no corres¬ 
ponding raptures; and the rhythmical quota¬ 
tions which overspread his letters never rise 
above the cantilena of the tabernacle. In po¬ 
lite literature, in physical and moral science, 
he never advanced much beyond the standard 
of the grammar-school of St. Mary de Crypt. 
Even as a theologian, he has no claims to 
erudition. He appears to have had no He¬ 
brew and little Greek, and to have studied 
neither ecclesiastical antiquity nor the great 
divines of modern times. His reading seems 
to have been confined to a few’, and those not 
the most considerable, of the works of the later 
nonconformists. Neither is it possible to as¬ 
sign him a place among profound or original 
thinkers. He was, in fact, almost an unedu¬ 
cated man ; and the powers of his mind w T ere 
never applied, and perhaps could not have 
been bent successfully, either to the acquisi¬ 
tion of abstruse knowledge or to the enlarge¬ 
ment of its boundaries. “Let the name of 
George Whitfield perish if God be glorified,” 
was his own ardent and sincere exclamation. 
His disciples will hardly acquiesce in their 
teacher’s self-abasement, but will resent, as 
injurious to him and to their cause, the impu¬ 
tations of enthusiasm, of personal timidity, of 
irreverence and coarseness of mind, of igno¬ 
rance and of a mediocrity or absence of the 
powers of fancy, invention and research. But 
the apotheosis of saints is no l&ss idolatrous 
than that of heroes; and they have not im¬ 
bibed Whitfield’s spirit who cannot brook to 
be told that he had his share of the faults and 
infirmities which no man more solemnly as¬ 
cribed to the w r hole human race. 

Such, however, was his energy and self-de¬ 
votion, that even the defects of his character 
were rendered subservient to the one end for 
which he lived. From the days of Paul of 
Tarsus and Martin Luther to our own, history 
records the career of no man who, with a less 
alloy of motives terminating in self, or of pas¬ 
sions breaking loose from the control of rea¬ 
son, concentrated all the faculties of his soul 
with such intensity and perseverance for the 
accomplishment of one great design. He be¬ 
longed to that rare variety of the human spe¬ 
cies of which it has been said that the liberties 
of mankind depend on their inability to com¬ 
bine in erecting a universal monarchy. With 
nerves incapable of fatigue, and a buoyant 
confidence in himself, which no authority, 
neglect, or opposition could abate, opposing a 
pachydermatous front to all the missiles of 
scorn and contumely, and yet exquisitely sen- 



2D 


THE LIVES OF WHITFIELD AND FROUDE. 


sitive to the affection which cheered, and the 
applause which rewarded his labours, unem¬ 
barrassed by the learning which reveals diffi¬ 
culties, or the meditative powers which suggest 
doubts; with an insatiable thirst for active oc¬ 
cupation, and an unhesitating faith in what¬ 
ever cause he undertook; he might have been 
one of the most dangerous enemies of the 
peace and happiness of the world, if powers 
so formidable in their possible abuse had not 
been directed to a beneficent end. Judged by 
the wisdom which is of the earth, earthy, Whit¬ 
field would be pronounced a man whose energy 
ministered to a vulgar ambition, of which the 
triumph over his ecclesiastical superiors, and 
the admiration of unlettered multitudes, were 
the object and the recompense. Estimated by 
those whose religious opinions and observ¬ 
ances are derived from him by hereditary de¬ 
scent, he is nothing less than an apostle, 
inspired in the latter ages of the church to 
purify her faith and to reform her morals. A 
more impartial survey of his life and writings 
may suggest the conclusion, that the homage 
of admiring crowds, and the blandishments of 
courtly dames, were neither unwelcome nor 
unsolicited; that a hierarchy subdued to inac¬ 
tion, if not to silence, gratified his self-esteem: 
and that, when standing on what he delighted 
to call his “ throne,” the current of devout and 
holy thoughts was not uncontaminated by the 
admixture of some human exultation. But ill 
betide him who delights in the too curious dis-. 
section of the motives of others, or even of his 
own. Such anatomists breathe an impure air, 
and unconsciously contract a sickly mental 
habit Whitfield was a great and a holy man; 
among the foremost of the heroes of philan¬ 
thropy, and as a preacher without a superior 
or a rival. 

If eloquence be justly defined by the emo¬ 
tions it excites, or by the activity it quickens, 
the greatest orator of our times was he who 
first announced the victory of Waterloo—-if 
that station be not rather due to the learned 
President of the College of Physicians, who 
daily makes the ears to tingle of those who 
listen to his prognostics. But the converse of 
the rule may be more readily admitted, and 
we may confidently exclude from the list of 
eloquent speakers him whose audience is im¬ 
passive whilst he addresses them, and inactive 
afterwards. Every seventh day a great com¬ 
pany of preachers raise their voices in the 
land to detect our sins, to explain our duty, to 
admonish, to alarm, and to console. Compare 
the prodigious extent of this apparatus with 
its perceptible results, and, inestimable as they 
are, who will deny that they disappointed the 
hopes which antecedently to experience, the 
least sanguine would have indulged? The 
preacher has, indeed, no novelties to commu¬ 
nicate. His path has been trodden hard and 
dry by constant use; yet he speaks as an am¬ 
bassador from Heaven, and his hearers are 
frail, sorrowing, perplexed, and dying men. 
The highest interests of both are at stake. 
The preacher’s eye rests on his manuscript; 
the hearer’s turns to the clock; the half hour 
glass runs out its sand; and the portals close 


on well-dressed groups of critics’ looking for 
all the world as if just dismissed from a lec¬ 
ture on the tertiary strata. 

Taking his stand on some rising knoll, his 
tall and graceful figure dressed with elaborate 
propriety, and composed into an easy and 
commanding attitude, Whitfield’s clear blue 
eye ranged over thousands, and tens of thou¬ 
sands, drawn up in close files on the plain 
below, or clustering into masses on every ad¬ 
jacent eminence. A “rabble rout” hung on 
the skirts of the mighty host; and the feelings 
of the devout were disturbed by the scurrile 
jests of the illiterate and the old sarcasms of 
the more polished spectators of their worship. 
But the rich and varied tones of a voice of 
unequalled depth and compass quickly si¬ 
lenced every ruder sound—as in rapid succes¬ 
sion its ever-changing melodies passed from 
the calm of simple narrative, to the measured 
distinctness of argument, to the vehemence of 
reproof, and the pathos of heavenly consola¬ 
tion. “ Sometimes the preacher wept exceed¬ 
ingly, stamped loudly and passionately, and 
was frequently so overcome that for a few 
seconds one would suspect he could never 
recover, and, when he did, nature required 
some little time to impose herself.” In words 
originally applied to one of the first German 
Reformers —vividus vultus, vividi oculi , vividce 
manus, denique omnia vivida. The agitated 
assembly caught the passions of the speaker, 
and exulted, wept, or trembled at his bidding. 
He stood before them, in popular belief, a per¬ 
secuted man, spurned and rejected by lordly 
prelates, yet still a presbyter of the church, 
and clothed with her authority; his meek and 
lowly demeanour chastened and elevated by 
the conscious grandeur of the apostolic suc¬ 
cession. The thoughtful gazed earnestly on 
the scene of solemn interest, pregnant with 
some strange and enduring influence on the 
future condition of mankind. But the wise 
and the simple alike yielded to the enchant¬ 
ment; and the thronging multitude gave utter¬ 
ance to their emotions in every form in which 
nature seeks relief from feeling too strong for 
mastery. 

Whitfield had cultivated the histrionic art 
to a perfection which has rarely been obtained 
by any who have worn the sock or the buskin. 
Foote and Garrick were his frequent hearers, 
and brought away with them the characteristic 
and very just remark, that “ his oratory was 
not at its full height until he had repeated a 
discourse forty times.” The transient delirium 
of franklin—attested by the surrender on one 
occasion of all the contents of his purse at a 
“charity sermon,” and by the Quaker’s refusal 
to lend more to a man who had lost his wits— 
did not prevent his investigating the causes of 
this unwonted excitement. “I came,” he says, 
“ by hearing him often, to distinguish between 
sermons newly composed and those he had 
preached often in the course of his travels. 
His delivery of the latter was so improved by 
frequent repetition, that every accent, every 
emphasis, every modulation of the voice was 
so perfectly timed, that, without being inte¬ 
rested in the subject, one could not help being 
c 2 




30 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


pleased with the discourse—a pleasure of 
much the same kind as that received from an 
excellent piece of music.” 

The basis of the singular dominion which 
was thus exercised by Whitfield during a pe¬ 
riod equal to that assigned by ordinary calcu¬ 
lation for the continuance of human life, would 
repay a more careful investigation than we 
have space or leisure to attempt. Amongst 
subordinate influences, the faintest of all is 
that which may have been occasionally exer¬ 
cised over the more refined and sensitive 
members of his congregations by the romantic 
scenery in which they assembled. But the 
tears shaping “ white gutters down the black 
faces of the colliers, black as they came out 
of the coal pits,” were certainly not shed under 
any overwhelming sense of the picturesque. 
The preacher himself appears to have felt and 
courted this excitement. “The open firma¬ 
ment above me, the prospect of the adjacent 
fields, to which sometimes was added the so¬ 
lemnity of the approaching evening, was,” he 
says, “ almost too much for me.” But a far 
more effectual resource was found in the art 
of diverting into a new and unexpected chan¬ 
nel, the feelings of a multitude already brought 
together with objects the most strangely con¬ 
trasted to his own. Journeying to Wales, he 
passes over Hampton Common, and finds him¬ 
self surrounded by twelve thousand people 
collected to see a man hung in chains, and 
an extempore pulpit is immediately provided 
within sight of this deplorable object. On 
another similar occasion, the wretched culprit 
was permitted to steal an hour from the eter¬ 
nity before him, while listening, or seeming to 
listen, to a sermon delivered by Whitfield to 
himself and to the spectators of his approach¬ 
ing doom. He reaches Basingstroke, when 
the inhabitants are engaged in all the festivi¬ 
ties of a country fair, and thus records the use 
he made of so tempting an opportunity. “As 
I passed on horseback I saw the stage, and as 
I rode further I met divers coming to the revel, 
which affected me so much that I had no rest 
in my spirit, and therefore having asked coun¬ 
sel of God, and perceiving an unusual warmth 
and power enter into my soul, though I was gone 
above a mile, I could not bear to see so many 
dear souls for whom Christ had died ready to 
perish, and no minister or magistrate to inter¬ 
pose ; upon this, I told my dear fellow-travel¬ 
lers that I was resolved to follow the example 
of Howell Harris in Wales, and bear my testi¬ 
mony against such lying vanities, let the con¬ 
sequences to my own private person be what 
they would. They immediately assenting, I 
rode back to the town, got upon the stage 
^erected for the wrestlers, and began to show 
them the error of their ways.” 

The often told tale of Whitfield’s contro¬ 
versy with the merry-andrew at Moorfields, 
still more curiously illustrates the skill and 
intrepidity with wdiich he contrived to divert 
to his ow r n purposes an excitement running at 
high tide in the opposite direction. The fol¬ 
lowing is an extract from his own narrative of 
the encounter. 

“ For many years, from one end of Moor- 
fields to the other, booths of all kinds have 


been erected for mountebanks, players, puppet- 
shows, and such like. With a heart bleeding 
with compassion for so many thousands led 
captive by the devil at his will, on Whit-Mon¬ 
day, at six o’clock in the morning, attended by 
a large congregation of praying people, I ven¬ 
tured to lift up a standard amongst them, in 
the name of Jesus of Nazareth. Perhaps there 
were about ten thousand in waiting, not for 
me, but for Satan’s instruments to amuse them. 
Glad was I to find that I had for once, as it 
were, got the start of the devil. I mounted my 
field pulpit; almost all flocked immediately 
around it; I preached on these words—‘As 
Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,’ 
&c. They gazed, they listened, they wept, 
and I believe that many felt themselves stung 
with deep conviction for their past sins. All 
was hushed and solemn. Being thus encou¬ 
raged I ventured out again at noon. The whole 
fields seemed, in a bad sense of the word, all 
white, ready not for the Redeemer’s but for 
Beelzebub’s harvest. All his agents were in 
full motion. Drummers, trumpeters, merry- 
andrews, masters of puppet-shows, exhibitions 
of wild beasts, players, &c., all busy in enter¬ 
taining their respective Auditors. I suppose 
there could not be less than twenty or thirty 
thousand people. My pulpit was fixed on the 
opposite side, and immediately, to their great 
mortification, they found the number of their 
attendants sadly lessened. Judging that, like 
St. Paul, I should now be called, as it were, to 
fight with beasts at Ephesus, I preached from 
these words, ‘ Great is Diana of the Ephe¬ 
sians.’ You may easily guess that there was 
some noise among the craftsmen, and that I 
was honoured with having a few stones, dirt, 
rotten eggs, and pieces of dead cats throAvn at 
me, whilst engaged in calling them from their 
favourite but lying vanities. My soul w r as 
indeed among lions, but far the greatest part 
of my congregation, which was very large, 
seemed for awhile turned into lambs. This 
Satan could not brook. One of his choicest 
servants was exhibiting, trumpeting on a large 
stage, but as soon as the people saw me in my 
black robes and my pulpit, I think all to a man 
left him. and ran to me. For awhile I was 
enabled to lift my voice like a trumpet, and 
many heard the joyful sound. God’s people 
kept praying, and the enemy’s agents made a 
kind of roaring at some distance from our 
camp. At length they approached near, and 
the merry-andrew got up on a man’s shoul¬ 
ders, and, advancing near the pulpit, attempted 
to lash me with a long heavy whip several 
times, but always with the violence of his 
motion tumbled down. I think I continued in 
praying, preaching and singing (for the noise 
was too great to preach) for about three hours. 
We then retired to the tabernacle, with my 
pockets full of notes from persons brought 
under concern, and read them amidst the 
praises and spiritual acclamations of thou¬ 
sands. Three hundred and fifty awakened 
souls were received in one day, and I believe 
the number of notes exceeded a thousand.” 

The propensity to mirth, which, in common 
with all men of robust mental constitution, 
Whitfield possessed in an unusual degree. 





31 


THE LIVES OF WHITFIELD AND FROUDE. 


was, like every thing else belonging to him, 
compelled to minister to the. interests and 
success of his preaching; but however much 
his pleasantries may attest the buoyancy of 
his mind, it would be difficult to assign them 
any other praise. Oscillating in spirit as well 
as in body, between Drury-Lane and the ta¬ 
bernacle, Shuter, the comedian, attended in 
Tottenham Court Road during the run of his 
successful performance \of the character of 
Ramble, and was greeted with the following 
apostrophe—“ And thou, poor Ramble, who 
hast so long rambled from Him, come thou 
also. Oh ! end thy rumblings, and come to 
Jesus. ’ The preacher in this instance de¬ 
scended not a little below the level of the 
player. 

In the eighteenth century the crown of mar¬ 
tyrdom was a prize for which Roman Catho¬ 
lics alone were permitted to contend, - and 
Whitfield was unable to gain the influence 
which he would have derived from the stake, 
from a prison or a confiscation. Conscious, 
however, ot the importance of such sufferings, 
he persuaded himself and desired to convince 
the world, that he had to endure them. The 
bishops were persecutors, because they re¬ 
pelled with some acrimony his attacks on 
their authority and reputation. The mob were 
persecutors, because they pelted a man who 
insisted on their hearing him preach when 
they wanted to see a bear dance, or a conjurer 
eat fire. A magistrate was a persecutor, be¬ 
cause he summoned him to appear on an un¬ 
founded charge, and then dismissed him on 
his own recognisance. He gloried with better 
reason in the contemptuous language with 
which he was assailed, even by the more de¬ 
corous of his. opponents, and in the ribaldries 
of Foot and Bickerstaff. He would gladly 
have partaken of the doom of Rogers and Rid¬ 
ley, if his times had permitted, and his cause 
required it; but the fires of Smithfield were 
put out, and the exasperated Momus of the 
fair, with his long whip, alone remained to do 
the honours appropriated to the feast of St. 
Bartholomew. 

There are extant seventy-five of the ser¬ 
mons by which Whitfield agitated nations, 
and the more remote influence of which is 
still distinctly to be traced, in the popular di¬ 
vinity and the national character of Great 
Britain and of the United States. They have, 
however, fallen into neglect; for to win per¬ 
manent acceptance for a book, into which the 
principles of life were not infused by its author, 
is a miracle which not even the zeal of reli¬ 
gious proselytes can accomplish. Yet, infe¬ 
rior as were his inventive to his mimetic 
powers, Whitfield is entitled, among theologi¬ 
cal writers, to a place, which if it cannot chal¬ 
lenge admiration, may at least excite and 
reward curiosity. Many, and those by far the 
worst, of his discourses, bear the marks of 
careful preparation. Take at hazard a ser¬ 
mon of one of the preachers usually distin¬ 
guished as evangelical, add a little to its 
length, and subtract a great deal from its point 
and polish, and you have one of his more 
elaborate performances—common topics dis¬ 
cussed in a common-place way; a respectable 


mediocrity of thought and style ; endless varia¬ 
tions on one or two cardinal truths—in short, 
the task of a clerical Saturday evening, exe¬ 
cuted with piety, good sense and exceeding 
sedateness. But open one of that series of 
Whitfield’s sermons which bears the stamp of 
having been conceived and uttered at the 
same moment, and imagine it recited to my¬ 
riads of eager listeners with every charm of 
voice and gesture, and the secret of his unri¬ 
valled fascination is at least partially disclosed. 
He places himself on terms of intimacy and 
unreserved confidence with you, and makes it 
almost as difficult to decline the invitation to 
his familiar talk as if Montagne himself had 
issued it. The egotism is amusing, affection¬ 
ate and warm-hearted; with just that slight 
infusion of self-importance without which it 
would pass for affectation. In his art of rhe¬ 
toric, personification holds the first place ; and 
the prosopopoeia is so managed as to quicken 
abstractions into life, and to give them indi¬ 
viduality and distinctness without the exhibi¬ 
tion of any of those spasmodic and distorted 
images which obey the incantations of vulgar 
exorcists. Every trace of study and contri¬ 
vance is obliterated by the hearty earnestness 
which pervades each successive period, and 
by the vernacular and homely odioms in which 
his meaning is conveyed. The recollection 
of William Cobbett will obtrude itself on the 
reader of these discourses, though the pre¬ 
sence of the sturdy athlete of the “ Political 
Register,” with his sophistry and his sarcasm, 
his drollery and his irascible vigour, sorely 
disturbs the sacred emotions which it was the 
one object of the preacher to awaken. And it 
is in this grandeur and singleness of purpose 
that the charm of Whitfield’s preaching seems 
really to have consisted. You feel that you 
have to do with a man who lived and spoke, 
and who would gladly have died, to deter his 
hearers from the path of destruction, and to 
guide them to holiness and peace. His gos¬ 
siping stories, and dramatic forms of speech, 
are never employed to hide the awful realities 
on which he is intent. Conscience is not per¬ 
mitted to find an intoxicating draught in even 
spiritual excitement, or an anodyne in glowing 
imagery. Guilt and its punishment, pardon 
and spotless purity, death and an eternal exist¬ 
ence, stand out in bold relief on every page. 
From these the eye of the teacher is never 
withdrawn, and to these the attention of the 
hearer is riveted. All that is poetic, grotesque, 
or rapturous, is employed to deepen these 
impressions, and is dimissed as soon as that 
purpose is answered. Deficient in learning, 
meagre in thought, and redundant in language 
as are these discourses, they yet fulfil the one 
great condition of genuine eloquence. They 
propagate their own kindly warmth, and leave 
their stings behind them. 

The enumeration of the sources of Whit¬ 
field’s power is still essentially defective. 
Neither energy, nor eloquence, nor histrionic 
talents, nor any artifices of style, nor the most 
genuine sincerity and self-devotedness, nor all 
these united, would have enabled him to mould 
the religious character of millions in his own 
and future generations. The secret lies deeper, 




.32 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


though not very deep. It consisted in the na¬ 
ture of the theology he taught—in its perfect 
simplicity and universal application. His 
thirty or forty thousand sermons were but so 
many variations on two key-notes. Man is 
guilty", and may obtain forgiveness ; he is im¬ 
mortal, and must ripen here for endless weal 
or wo hereafter. Expanded into innumerable 
forms, and diversified by infinite varieties of 
illustration, these two cardinal principles were 
ever in his heart and on his tongue. Let who 
would invoke poetry to embellish the Christian 
system, or philosophy to explore its esoteric 
depths, from his lips it was delivered as an 
awful and urgent summons to repent, to be¬ 
lieve, and to obey. To set to music the orders 
issued to seamen in a storm, or to address 
them in the language of Aristotle or Descartes, 
would have seemed to him not a whit more 
preposterous than to divert his hearers from 
their danger and their refuge, their duties and 
their hopes, to any topics more trivial or more 
abstruse. In fine, he was thoroughly and con¬ 
tinually in earnest, and, therefore, possessed 
that tension of the soul which admitted neither 
of lassitude nor relaxation, few and familiar as 
were the topics to which he was confined. 
His was, therefore, precisely that state of mind 
in which alone eloquence, properly so called, 
can be engendered, and a moral and intellec¬ 
tual sovereignty won. 

A still more important topic we pass over 
silently, not as doubting, or reluctant to ac¬ 
knowledge, the reality of that divine influence, 
of which the greatest benefactors of mankind 
are at most but the voluntary agents; but be¬ 
cause, desiring to observe the proprieties of 
time and place, we abandon such discussions 
to pages more sacred than our own. 

The effects of Whitfield’s labours on suc¬ 
ceeding times have been thrown into the 
shade by the more brilliant fortunes of the 
ecclesiastical dynasty of which Wesley was 
at once the founder, the lawgiver, and the head. 
Yet a large proportion of the American 
churches, and that great body of the Church of 
England which, assuming the title of evangeli¬ 
cal, has been refused that of orthodox, may 
trace back their spiritual genealogy, by regu¬ 
lar descent from him. It appears, indeed, that 
there are among them some who, for having 
disavowed this ancestry, have brought them¬ 
selves within the swing of Mr. Phillip’s club. 
To rescue them, if it were possible, from the 
bruises which they have provoked, would be 
to arrest the legitimate march of penal justice. 
The consanguinity is attested by historical re¬ 
cords and by the strongest family resemblance. 
The quarterings of Whitfield are entitled to a 
conspicuous place in the evangelical scutch¬ 
eon ; and they who bear it are not wise in 
being ashamed of the blazonry. 

Four conspicuous names connect the great 
field-preacher with the evangelical body, as it 
at present exists in the Church of England. 
The first of these, Henry Venn, exhibited in a 
systematic form the doctrines and precepts of 
the evangelical divinity in a treatise, bearing 
the insignificant title of the “ New Whole Duty 
of Man.” He was the founder of that “school 
of the prophets,” which has, to the present 


day, continued to flourish with unabated or in* 
creasing vigour in the University of Cambridge, 
and the writer of a series of letters which have 
lately been edited by one of his lineal descend¬ 
ants. They possess the peculiar and very 
powerful charm of giving utterance to the 
most profound affections in grave, chaste, and 
simple language, and indicate a rare subjec¬ 
tion of the intellectual, and sensitive, to the 
spiritual nature—of an intellect of no common 
vigour, and a sensibility of exquisite acuteness, 
to a spirit at once elevated and subdued by de¬ 
vout contemplations. 

He was followed by Joseph Milner, who, in 
a history of the Church of Christ, traced, from 
the days of the Apostles to the Reformation, 
the perpetual succession of an interior society 
by which the tenets of the Calvinistic Method¬ 
ists had been received and transmitted as a 
sacred deposit from age to age. A man of 
more spotless truth and honesty than Milner 
never yet assumed the historical office. But 
he was encumbered at once by a theory, and 
by the care of a grammar-school; the one an¬ 
ticipating his judgments, the other narrowing 
the range of his investigations. His “appara¬ 
tus” included little more than the New Testa¬ 
ment, the Fathers, and the ecclesiastical histo¬ 
rians. To explore, to concentrate, and to 
scrutinize with philosophical scepticism, the 
evidences by which they are illustrated and 
explained, was a task unsuited alike to his 
powers, his devotion, and his taste. He has 
bequeathed to the world a book which can 
never lose its interest, either with those who 
read it to animate their piety, or with those 
who, in their search for historical truth, are 
willing not merely to examine the proofs, but 
to listen to the advocates. 

John Newton, most generally known as the 
friend and spiritual guide of Cow r per, has yet 
better claims to celebrity. For many years 
the standard-bearer of his section of the Angli¬ 
can church in London, he w r as the writer of 
many works, and especially of an autobiogra¬ 
phy, which is to be numbered amongst the 
most singular and impressive delineations of 
human character. A more rare psychological 
phenomenon than New r ton was never subjected 
to the examination of the curious. The cap¬ 
tain of a slave-ship, given up at one time to all 
manner of vice and debauchery, gradually 
emerges into a perfect Oroondates, haunted to 
the verge of madness by the sentimental 
Psyche, but is still a slave-trader. He studies 
the Scriptures and the classics in his cabin, 
while his captives are writhing in mental and 
bodily agonies in the hold. With nerves of 
iron, and sinews of brass, he combines an al¬ 
most feminine tenderness, and becomes suc¬ 
cessively the victim of remorse, a penitent, a 
clergyman, an eminent preacher, an author of 
no mean pretensions in verse and prose, be¬ 
loved and esteemed by the wise and good; and 
at an extreme old age closes in honour, peace, 
and humble hope, a life of strange vicissitudes, 
and of still stranger contrasts. The position 
which he has the courage to challenge for 
himself in the chronicle of his party, is that of 
an example of the salutary influence of their 
principles on a man once given up to reckless 



THE LIVES OF WHITFIELD AND FROUDE. 


33 


guilt. His friends and followers, with more 
discretion, and at least equal truth, assert for 
him the praise of having consecrated his riper 
and declining years to the practice of pure and 
nndefiled religion; and to the inculcation of it 
with all the vigour of his natural disposition, 
tempered by a composure and adorned by an 
elegance, the most remote from his primitive 
character. 

The last of the fathers of the Evangelical 
Church was Thomas Scott, the author of many 
books, and amongst these'of a treatise called 
the “ Force of Truth,” which records his own 
mental history; and of a Commentary on the 
Bible, in which the truth he sought and be¬ 
lieved himself to have found is discovered in 
almost every page of the inspired volume. 
Scott was nothing less than a prodigy of auto- 
didactic knowledge. Bred up in humble life, 
with little education, regular or irregular, and 
immersed from youth to age in clerical cares 
(of which a well-filled nursery and an ill-filled 
purse seem inevitable parts) he had neither 
money to multiply books, nor much leisure or 
inclination to read them. But he studied his 
congregation, his Bible, and himself. From 
those investigations, conducted with admirable 
sagacity, good faith and perseverance, he ac¬ 
cumulated a fund of thought indigenous if not 
original, accurate if not profound, which, con¬ 
sidered as the gathering of a solitary mind, is 
altogether marvellous. In the later editions 
of his work, indeed, he interspersed such 
learning as he had derived from subsequent 
study. But, inverting the established order, 
he seems to have published his own books 
first, and to have read those of other men 
afterwards. Such a process, executed with 
such zeal and earnestness, if aided by a vivid 
imagination, would have rendered his specu¬ 
lations instinct with breath and life ; if directed 
by vanity, it would have ascribed to the sacred 
oracles some wild novelties of meaning at jar 
with the sense and spirit of their authors; if 
guided by mercenary views, it would have 
brought them into harmony with the opinions 
of the orthodox dispensers of ecclesiastical 
emoluments and honours. But imagination 
in the mind of Thomas Scott was not merely 
wanting, it was a negative quantity; and his 
chariot-wheels drove heavily. The thirst of 
praise or of wealth was quenched by a desire 
as simple and as pure as ever prompted 
human activity to promote the Divine glory 
and the good of man. He would have seen 
the labours of his life perish, and would have 
perished with them, rather than distort the 
sense of revelation by a hair’s breadth from 
what he believed to be its genuine meaning. 
He rendered to his party (if with such a man 
party can be fitly associated) the inestimable 
service of showing how their distinguishing 
tenets may be deduced from the sacred canon, 
or reconciled with it; and of placing their 
feet on that which Chillingworth had pro¬ 
claimed as the rock of the Reformation. 

Gradually, however, it came to pass in the 
Evangelical, as in other societies, that the 
symbol was adopted by many who were stran¬ 
gers to the spirit of the original institution;— 
by many an indolent, trivial, or luxurious 


aspirant to its advantages, both temporal and 
eternal. The terms of membership had never 
been definite or severe. Whitfield and his 
followers had required from those who joined 
their standard neither the adoption of any new 
ritual, nor the abandonment of any established 
ceremonies, nor an irksome submission to 
ecclesiastical authority, nor the renunciation 
of any reputable path to eminence or to wealth. 
The distinguishing tenets are few and easily 
learned; the necessary observances neither 
onerous nor unattended with much pleasurable 
emotion. In the lapse of years the discipline 
of the society imperceptibly declined, and 
errors coeval with its existence exhibited 
themselves in an exaggerated form. When 
country gentlemen and merchants, lords spiri 
tual and temporal, and even fashionable ladies 
gave in their adhesion, their dignities unin¬ 
vaded, their ample expenditure flowing chiefly 
in its accustomed channels, and their saloons 
as crowded if not as brilliant as before, the 
spirit of Whitfield was to be traced among his 
followers, not so much in the burning zeal and 
self-devotion of that extraordinary man, as in 
his insubordination to episcopal rule and un¬ 
quenchable thirst for spiritual excitement. 
Although the fields and the market-places no 
longer echoed to the voice of the impassioned 
preacher and the hallelujahs of enraptured 
myriads ; yet spacious theatres, sacred to such 
uses, received a countless host to harangue or 
to applaud; to recount or to hear adventures 
of stirring interest; to propagate the Christian 
faith to the furthest recesses of the globe; to 
drop the superfluous guinea, and to retire 
with feelings strangely balanced between the 
human and the divine, the glories of heaven 
and the vanities of earth. 

The venerable cloisters of Oxford sheltered 
a new race of students, who listened not with¬ 
out indignation, to the rumours of this reli¬ 
gious movement. Invigorated by habitual 
self-denial; of unsullied, perhaps of austere 
virtue; with intellectual powers of no vulgar 
cast; and deeply conversant with Christian 
antiquity,—they acknowledged a Divine com¬ 
mand to recall their country to a piety more 
profound and masculine, more meek and con¬ 
templative. They spoke in the name and with 
the authority of the “Catholic Church,” the 
supreme interpreter of the holy mysteries con¬ 
fided to her care. That sublime abstraction 
has not indeed, as of yore, a visible throne and 
a triple crown ; nor can she now point to the 
successors of the fishermen of Galilee col¬ 
lected into a sacred college at the Vatican. 
Though still existing in a mysterious unity of 
communion, faith, and practice, she is present 
in every land and among all people, where 
due honour is paid to the episcopal office de¬ 
rived by an unbroken succession from the 
apostles. Her doctrines are those to which 
Rome and Constantinople have made some 
corrupt additions, but which the Ante-Nicene 
fathers professed and our Anglo-Saxon ances¬ 
tors adopted. She requires the rigid obser 
vance of her ancient formularies, and calls on 
her children to adore rather than to investi¬ 
gate. She announces tenets which the un¬ 
learned must submissively receive with a 




STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


34 

modest self-distrust; inculcates a morality 
whicn pervades and sanctifies the most mi¬ 
nute, not less than the more considerable of 
our actions; and demands a piety which is to 
be avowed not by the utterance of religious 
sentiments, nor by a retreat from the ordinary 
pursuits or pleasures of the world, but by the 
silent tenor of a devout life. If among the 
teachers of this new or restored divinity, Ox¬ 
ford should raise up another Whitfield, the 
principles for which the martyrs of the Refor¬ 
mation died might be in peril of at least a 
temporary subversion, in that church which 
has for the last three centuries numbered 
Cranmer, Hooper, and Ridley, amongst her 
most venerated fathers. The extent of the 
danger will be best estimated by a short sur¬ 
vey of the career of the only confessor of Ox¬ 
ford Catholicism, who has yet taken his place 
in ecclesiastical biography. 

Richard Hurrell Froude was born “ on the 
Feast of the Annunciation” in 1803, and died 
in 1836. He was an Etonion; a fellow of 
Oriel college ; a priest in holy orders; the 
writer of journals, letters, sermons, and unsuc¬ 
cessful prize essays ; an occasional contributor 
to the periodical literature of his theological 
associates; and, during the last four years of 
his life, a resident alternately in the south of 
Europe and the West Indies. If the progress 
of his name to oblivion shall be arrested for 
some brief interval, it will be owing to the 
strange discretion with which his surviving 
friends have disclosed to the world the curious 
and melancholy portraiture drawn by his own 
hand of the effects of their peculiar system. 
“ The extreme importance of the views to the 
development of which the whole is meant to 
be subservient,” and “ the instruction derivable 
from a full exhibition of his character as a wit¬ 
ness to those views,” afford the inadequate 
apology for inviting the world to read a self- 
examination as frank and unreserved as the 
most courageous man could have committed 
to paper in this unscrupulous and inquisitive 
generation. Yet, if the editors of Mr. Froude’s 
papers are the depositaries of those which his 
mother appears to have written, and will pub¬ 
lish them also, it will be impossible to refuse 
them absolution from whatever penalties they 
may have already incurred. These volumes 
contain but one letter from that lady; and it 
contrasts with the productions of her son as 
the voice of a guardian angel with the turbu¬ 
lent language of a spirit to which it had been 
appointed to minister. She read his heart 
with a mother’s sagacity, and thus revealed it 
to himself with a mother’s tenderness and 
truth. 

“ From his very birth his temper has been 
peculiar; pleasing, intelligent, and attaching, 
when his mind was undisturbed and he was in 
the company of people who treated him reason¬ 
ably and kindly; but exceedingly impatient 
under vexatious circumstances; very much 
disposed to find his own amusement in teasing 
and vexing others; and almost entirely incorri¬ 
gible when it was necessary to reprove him. 
I never could find a successful mode of treat¬ 
ing him. Harshness made him obstinate and 
gloomy; calm and long displeasure made him 


stupid and sullen; and kind patience had not 
sufficient power over his feelings to force him 
to govern himself. After a statement of such 
great faults, it may seem an inconsistency to 
say, that he nevertheless still bore about him 
strong marks of a promising character. In all 
points of substantial principle his feelings 
were just and high. He had (for his age) an 
unusually deep feeling of admiration for every 
thing which was good and noble; his relish 
was lively and his taste good, for all the plea¬ 
sures of the imagination; and he was also quite 
conscious of his own faults, and (untempted) 
had a just dislike to them.” 

Though the mother and the child are both 
beyond the reach of all human opinion, it 
seems almost an impiety to transcribe her 
estimate of his early character, and to add, 
that, when developed and matured in his riper 
years, it but too distinctly fulfilled her less 
favourable judgment. Exercising a stern and 
absolute dominion over all the baser passions, 
with a keen perception of the beautiful in na¬ 
ture and in art, and a deep homage for the 
sublime in morals; imbued with the spirit of 
the classical authors, and delighting in the 
strenuous exercise of talents which, if they fell 
short of excellence, rose far above mediocrity, 
Mr. Froude might have seemed to want no 
promise of an honourable rank in literature, 
or of distinction in his sacred office. His 
career was intercepted by a premature death, 
but enough is recorded to show that his aspi¬ 
rations, however noble, must have been de¬ 
feated by the pride and moroseness which his 
mother’s wisdom detected, and which her love 
disclosed to him; united as they were to a con¬ 
stitutional distrust of his own powers and a 
weak reliance on other minds for guidance 
and support. A spirit at once haughty and 
unsustained by genuine self-confidence; sub¬ 
dued by the stronger will or intellect of other 
men, and glorying in that subjection; regard¬ 
ing its opponents with an intolerance exceed¬ 
ing their own ; and, in the midst of all, turning 
with no infrequent indignation on itself— 
might form the basis of a good dramatic 
sketch, of which Mr. Froude might not un¬ 
worthily sustain the burden. But a “dialogue 
of the dead,” in which George Whitfield and 
Richard Froude should be the interlocutors, 
would be a more appropriate channel for illus¬ 
trating the practical uses of “ the second re¬ 
formation,” and of the “ Catholic restoration,” 
which it is the object of their respective bio¬ 
graphies to illustrate. Rhadamanthus having 
dismissed them from his tribunal, they would 
compare together their juvenile admiration of 
the drama, their ascetic discipline at Oxford, 
their early dependence on stronger or more 
•resolute minds, their propensity to self-observa¬ 
tion and to record its results on paper, their 
opinions of the negro race, and the surprise 
with which they witnessed the worship of the 
Church of Rome in lands where it is still tri¬ 
umphant. So far all is peace, and the Con¬ 
cordes animx exchange such greetings as pass 
between disembodied spirits. But when the 
tidings brought by the new denizen of the 
Elysian fields to the reformer of the eighteenth 
century, reach his affrighted shade, the regions 



THE LIVES OF WHITFIELD AND FROUDE. 


of the blessed are disturbed by an unwonted 
discord ; and the fiery soul of Whitfield blazes 
with intense desire to resume his wanderings 
through the earth, and to lift up his voice 
against the new apostasy. 

It was with no unmanly dread of the probe, 
but from want of skill or leisure to employ it, 
that the self-scrutiny of Whitfield seldom or 
never penetrated much below the surface. 
Preach he must; and when no audience could 
be brought together, he seized a pen and ex¬ 
horted himself. The uppermost feeling, be it 
what it may, is put down in his journal honestly, 
vigorously and devoutly. Satan is menaced 
and upbraided. Intimations from Heaven are 
recorded without one painful doubt of their 
origin. He prays and exults, anticipates the 
future with delight, looks back to the past with 
thankfulness, blames himself simply because 
he thinks himself to blame, despairs of nothing, 
fears nothing, and has not a moment’s ill-will 
to any human being. 

Mr. Froude conducts his written soliloquies 
in a different spirit. His introverted gaze 
analyzes with elaborate minuteness the va¬ 
rious motives at the confluence of which his 
active powers receive their impulse, and, with 
perverted sagacity, pursues the self-examina¬ 
tion, until, bewildered in the dark labyrinth of 
his own nature, he escapes to the cheerful 
light of day by locking up his journal. “A 
friend” (whose real name is as distinctly inti¬ 
mated under its initial letter as if the patro¬ 
nymic were written at length) “ advises burning 
confessions. I cannot make up my mind to 
that,” replies the penitent, “ but I think I can 
see many points in which it will be likely to 
do me good to be cut off for some time from 
these records.” On such a subject the author 
of “ The Christian Year” was entitled to more 
deference. The great ornament of the Col¬ 
lege de Propaganda at Oxford, he also had 
used the mental microscope to excess. Admo¬ 
nishing men to approach their Creator not as 
isolated beings, but as members of the Uni¬ 
versal Church, and teaching the inmates of 
her hallowed courts to worship in strains so 
pure, so reverent, and so meek, as to answer 
not unworthily to the voice of hope and recon¬ 
ciliation in which she is addressed by her 
Divine Head, yet had this “ sweet singer” so 
brooded over the evanescent processes of hi^ 
own spiritual nature, as not seldom to throw 
round his meaning a haze which rendered it 
imperceptible to his readers and probably to 
himself. With what sound judgment he coun¬ 
selled Mr. Froude to burn his books may be 
judged from the following entries in them: 

“ I have been talking a great deal to B. about 
religion to-day. He seems to take such straight¬ 
forward practical views of it that, when I am 
talking to him, I wonder what I have been 
bothering myself with all the summer, and 
almost doubt how far it is right to allow my¬ 
self to indulge in speculations on a subject 
where all that is necessary is so plain and 
obvious.”—“ Yesterday when I went out shoot¬ 
ing, I fancied I did not care whether I hit or 
not, but when it came to the point I found 
myself anxious, and, after having killed, was 
not unwilling to let myself be considered a 


3r> 

better shot than I had described myself. I 
had an impulse, too, to let it be thought I had 
only three shots when I really had had four. It 
was slight, to be sure, but I felt it.”—“ I have 
read my journal, though I can hardly identify 
myself with the person it describes. It seems 
like leaving some one under one’s guardian¬ 
ship who was an intolerable fool, and exposed 
himself to my contempt every moment for the 
most ridiculous and trifling motives; and 
while I was thinking all this, I went into L.’s 
room to seek a pair of shoes, and on hearing 
him coming got away as silently as possible. 
Why did I do this 1 Did I think I was doing 
what L. did not like, or was it the relic of a 
sneaking habit! I will ask myself these ques¬ 
tions again.”—“I have a sort of vanity which 
aims at my own good opinion, and I look for 
any thing to prove to myself that I am more 
anxious to mind myself than other people. I 
was very hungry, but because I thought the 
charge unreasonable, I tried to shirk the 
waiter; sneaking!”—“ Yesterday I was much 
put out by an old fellow chewing tobacco 
and spitting across me; also bad thoughts of 
various kinds kept presenting themselves to my 
mind when it was vacant.”—“ I talked sillily 
to-day as I used to do last term, but took no 
pleasure in it, so I am not ashamed. Although 
I don’t recollect any harm of myself, yet I 
don’t feel that I have made a clean breast of 
it.”—“I forgot to mention that I had been 
looking round my rooms and thinking that 
they looked comfortable and nice, and that I 
said in my heart, Ah, ha ! I am warm.”—“ It 
always suggests itself to me that a wise thought 
is wasted when it is kept to myself, against 
which, as it is my most bothering temptation, 
I will set down some arguments to be called 
to mind in time of trouble.”—“Now I am 
proud of this, and think that the knowledge it 
shows of myself implies a greatness of mind.”— 
“These records are no guide to me to show 
the state of my mind afterwards; they are so 
far from being exercises of humility, that they 
lessen the shame of what I record just as pro¬ 
fessions and good-will to other people recon¬ 
cile us to our neglect of them.” 

The precept “ know thyself,” came down 
from heaven ; but such self-knowledge as this 
has no heavenward tendency. It is no part 
of the economy of our nature, or of the will of 
our Maker, that we should so cunningly un¬ 
ravel the subtle filaments of which our mo¬ 
tives are composed. If a man should subject 
to such a scrutiny the feelings of others 
to himself, he would soon lose his faith in 
human virtue and affection; and the mind 
which should thus put to the question its own 
workings in the domestic or social relations 
of life would ere long become the victim of a 
still more fatal skepticism. Why dream that 
this reflex operation, which, if directed towards 
those feelings of which our fellow-creatures 
are the object, would infallibly eject from the 
heart all love and all respect for man, should 
strengthen either the love or the fear of God \ 
A well-tutored conscience aims at breadth 
rather than minuteness of survey; and tasks 
itself much more to ascertain general results 
than to find out the solution ‘tdd.i- 




3fi 


STEPHEN'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


long as religious men must reveal their “ expe¬ 
riences,” and self-defamation revels in its pre¬ 
sent impunity, there is no help for it, but in 
withholding the applause to which even lowli¬ 
ness itself aspires for the candour with which 
it is combined, and the acuteness by which it 
is embellished. 

It is not by these nice self-observers that the 
creeds of hoar antiquity, and the habits of cen¬ 
turies are to be shaken; nor is such high era- 
prize reserved for ascetics who can pause to 
enumerate the slices of bread and butter from 
which they have abstained. When Whitfield 
would mortify his bod} r , he set about it like a 
man. The paroxysm was short, indeed, but 
terrible. While it lasted his diseased imagi¬ 
nation brought soul and body into deadly con¬ 
flict, the fierce spirit spurning, trampling, and 
well-nigh destroying the peccant carcass. Not 
so the fastidious and refined “witness to the 
views” of the restorers of the Catholic Church. 
The strife between his spiritual and animal 
nature is recorded in his journal in such terms 
as these :—“ Looked with greediness to see if 
there was goose on the table for dinner.”— 
“Meant to have kept a fast, and did abstain 
from dinner, but at tea ate buttered toast.”— 
“ Tasted nothing to-day till tea-time, and then 
only one cup and dry bread.”—“I have kept 
my fast strictly, having taken nothing till near 
nine this evening, and then only a cup of tea 
and a little bread without butter, but it has not 
been as easy as it was last.”—“ I made rather 
a more hearty tea than usual, quite giving up 
the notion of a fast in W.’s rooms, and by this 
weakness have occasioned another slip.” 

Whatever may be thought of the propriety 
of disclosing such passages as these, they will 
provoke a contemptuous smile from no one 
who knows much of his own heart. But they 
may relieve the anxiety of the alarmists. Lu¬ 
ther and Zuingle, Cranmer, and Latimer, may 
still rest in their honoured graves. “Take 
courage, brother Ridley, we shall light up such 
a flame in England as shall not soon be put 
out,” is a prophecy which will not be defeated 
by the successors of those who heard it, so 
long as their confessors shall be vacant to 
record, and their doctors to publish, contrite 
reminiscences of a desire for roasted goose, 
and of an undue indulgence in buttered toast. 

Yet the will to subvert the doctrines and 
discipline of the Reformation is not wanting, 
and is not concealed. Mr. Froude himself, 
were he still living, might, indeed, object to be 
judged by his careless and familiar letters. 
No such objection can, however, be made by 
the eminent persons who have deliberately 
given them to the world on account of “ the 
truth and extreme importance of the views to 
which the whole is meant to be subservient,” 
and in which they record their “ own general 
concurrence.” Of these weighty truths take 
the following examples: 

“You will be shocked at my avowal that I 
am every day becoming a less and less loyal 
son of the Reformation. It appears to me 
plain, that in all matters which seem to us 
indi fie rent, or even doubtful, we should con¬ 
form our practices to those of the Church, 
*’hich has preserved its traditionary practices 


unbroken. We cannot know about any seem¬ 
ingly indifferent practice of the Church of 
Rome that is not a development of the aposto¬ 
lic and it is to no purpose to say that we 
can find no proof of it in the writings of tne 
first six centuries—they must find a disproof 
if they would do any thing.”—“I think people 
are injudicious who talk against the Homan 
Catholics for worshipping saints and honour¬ 
ing the Virgin and images, &c. These things 
may, perhaps, be idolatrous; I cannot make 
up my mind about it.”—“P. called us the 
PapafProtestant Church, in which he proved 
a doubly ignorance, as we are Catholics with¬ 
out the popery, and Church of England men 
without the protestantism.”—“The more I 
think over that view of yours about regarding 
our present communion service, &c., as a judg¬ 
ment on the Chul’ch, and taking it as the 
crumbs from the apostle’s table, the more I 
am struck with its fitness to be dwelt upon as 
tending to check the intrusion of irreverent 
thoughts, without in any way interfering with 
one’s just indignation.”—“Your trumpery prin¬ 
ciple about Scripture being the sole rule of 
faith in fundamentals (I nauseate the word) 
is but a mutilated edition, without the breadth 
and axiomatic character, of the original.”— 
“Really I hate the Reformation and the re¬ 
formers more and more, and have almost 
made up my mind that the rationalist spirit 
they set afloat is the 4,Et>Sorfpoof the 
Revelation.” Why do you praise Ridley 1 Do 
you know sufficient good about him to coun¬ 
terbalance the fact, that he was the associate 
of Cranmer, Peter Martyr, and Bucer?”—“I 
wish you could get to know something of S. 
and W. (Southey and Wordsworth) and un¬ 
protestantize and un-Miltonize them.”—“ How 
is it we are so viuch in advance of our genera¬ 
tion 

Spirit of George Whitfield! how would thy 
voice, rolled from “ the secret place of thun¬ 
ders,” have overwhelmed these puny protests 
against the truths which it proclaimed from 
the rising to the setting sun! In what does 
the modern creed of Oxford differ from the 
ancient faith of Rome 1 Hurried along by the 
abhorred current of advancing knowledge and 
social improvement, they have indeed re¬ 
nounced papal dominion, and denied papal 
infallibility, and rejected the grosser super¬ 
stitions which Rome herself at once despises 
and promotes. But a prostrate submission to 
human authority (though veiled under words 
of vague and mysterious import)—the repose 
of the wearied or indolent mind on external 
observances—an escape from the arduous ex¬ 
ercise of man’s highest faculties in the wor¬ 
ship of his Maker—the usurped dominion of 
the imaginative and sensitive over the intel¬ 
lectual powers—these are the common cha¬ 
racteristics of both systems. 

The Reformation restored to the Christian 
world its only authentic canon, and its one 
Supreme Head. It proclaimed the Scriptures 
as the rule of life; and the Divine Redeemer 
as the supreme and central object to whom 
every eye must turn, and on whom every hope 
must rest. It cast down not only the idols 
erected for the adoration of the vulgar, but the 



THE LIVES OF WHITFIELD AND FROUDE. 


37 


idolatrous abstractions to which the worship 
ot more cultivated minds was rendered. Pene¬ 
trating the design, and seizing the spirit of 
the gospels, the reformers inculcated the faith 
in which the sentient and the spiritual in 
man’s compound nature had each its appro¬ 
priate office; the one directed to the Redeemer 
in his palpable form, the other to the Divine 
Paraclete in his hidden agency; while, united 
with these, they exhibited to a sinful but peni¬ 
tent race the parental character of the Omni¬ 
present Deity. Such is not the teaching of 
the restored theology. The most eminent of 
its professors have thrown open the doors of 
Mr. Froude’s oratory, and have invited all 
passers-by to notice in his prayers and medi¬ 
tations “the absence of any distinct mention 
of our Lord and Saviour.” They are exhorted 
not to doubt that there was a real though silent 
“allusion to Christ” under the titles in wdiich 
the Supreme Being is addressed; and are told 
that “ this circumstance may be a comfort to 
those who cannot bring themselves to assume 
the tone of many popular writers of this day, 
who yet are discouraged by the peremptori¬ 
ness with which it is exacted of them. The 
truth is, that a mind alive to its own real state 
often shrinks to utter w r hat it most dwells 
upon; and is too full of awe and fear to do 
more than silently hope what it most wishes.” 
It would indeed be presumptuous to pass a 
censure, or to hazard an opinion, on the pri¬ 
vate devotions of any man; but there is no 
such risk in rejecting the apology which the 
publishers of those secret exercises have ad¬ 
vanced for Mr. Froude’s departure from the 
habits of his fellow Christians. Feeble, in¬ 
deed, and emasculate must be the system, 
which, in its delicate distaste for the “ popular 
writers of the day,” would bury in silence the 
name in which every tongue and language has 
been summoned to worship and to rejoice. 
Well may “awe and fear” become all who 
assume and all who invoke it. But an “ awe” 
which “shrihks to utter” the name of Him 
who was born at Bethlehem, and yet does not 
fear to use the name which is ineffable;—a 
“ fear” which can make mention of the Father, 
but may not speak of the Brother, of all—is a 
feeling which fairly baffles comprehension. 
There is a much more simple, though a less 
imposing theory. Mr. Froude permitted him¬ 
self, and was encouraged by his correspond¬ 
ents, to indulge in the language of antipathy 
and scorn towards a large body of his fellow 
Christians. It tinges his letters, his journals, 
and is not without its influence even on his 
devotions. Those despised men too often cele¬ 
brated the events of their Redeemer’s life, and 
the benefits of his passion, in language of 
offensive familiarity, and invoked him with 
fond and feeble epithets. Therefore, a good 
Oxford Catholic must envelope in mystic 
terms all allusion to Him round whom as its 
centre the whole Christian system revolves. 
The line of demarcation between themselves 
and these coarse sentimentalists must be broad 
and deep, even though it should exclude those 
by whom it is run, from all the peculiar and 
distinctive ground on which the standard of 
the Protestant churches has been erected. 


There is nothing to dread from such hostility 
and such enemies. A fine lady visits the 
United States, and, in loathing against the 
tobacconized republic, becomes an absolutist. 
A “double first-class” theologian overhears 
the Evangelical psalmody, and straightway 
turns Catholic. But Congress will not dissolve 
at the bidding of the fair; nor will Exeter hall 
be closed to propitiate the fastidious. The 
martyrs of disgust and the heroes of revolu¬ 
tions are composed of opposite materials, and 
are cast in very different moulds. Nothing 
truly great or formidable w r as ever yet accom¬ 
plished, in thought or action, by men whose 
love for truth was not strong enough to tri¬ 
umph over their dislike of the offensive objects 
with wffiich it may be associated. 

Mr. Froude was the victim of these associa¬ 
tions. Nothing escapes his abhorrence which 
has been regarded with favour by his political 
or religious antagonists. The Bill for the 
Abolition of Slavery was recommended to 
Parliament by an administration more than 
suspected of liberalism. The “ Witness to 
Catholic Views,” “in -whose sentiments as a 
whole,” his editors concur, visits the West 
Indies, and they are not afraid to publish the 
following report of his feelings:—“ I have felt 
it a kind of duty to maintain in my mind an 
habitual hostility to the niggers, and to chuckle 
over the failures of the new system, as if these 
poor wretches concentrated in themselves all 
the whiggery, dissent, cant, and abomination 
that have been ranged on their side.” Lest 
this should pass for a pleasant extravagance, 
the editors enjoin the reader not to “confound 
the author’s view of the negro cause and of 
the abstract negro with his feelings towards 
any he should exactly meet;” and Professor 
Tholuck is summoned from Germany to ex¬ 
plain how the “originators of error” may law¬ 
fully be the objects of a good man’s hate, and 
how it may innocently overflow upon all their 
clients, kindred, and connexions. Mr. Froude’s 
feelings towards the “ abstract negro” would 
have satisfied the learned professor in his 
most indignant mood. “I am ashamed,” he 
says, “I cannot get over my prejudices against 
the niggers.”—“Every one I meet seems to 
me like an incarnation of the whole Anti- 
Slavery Society, and Fowell Buxton at their 
head.”—“ The thing that strikes me as most 
remarkable in the cut of these niggers is 
excessive immodesty, a forward, stupid fami¬ 
liarity intended for civility, which prejudices 
me against them worse even than Buxton’s 
cant did. It is getting to be the fashion with 
every body, even the planters, to praise the 
emancipation and Mr. Stanley.” Mr. Froude, 
or rather his editors, appear to have fallen into 
the error of supposing that his profession gave 
him not merely the right to admonish, but the 
privilege to scold. Lord Stanley and Mr. 
Buxton have, however, the consolation of 
being railed at in good company. Hampden 
is “ hated” with much zeal, though, it is admit¬ 
ted, with imperfect knowledge. Louis Philippe, 
and his associates of the-Three Days, receive 
the following humane benediction—“I sin¬ 
cerely hope the march of mind in France may 
yet prove a bloody one .” “The election of the 



38 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


wretched B. for-, and that base fellow, H. 

for-, in spite of the exposure,” &c. Again, 

the editors protest against our supposing that 
this is a playful exercise in the art of exagge¬ 
ration. “It should be observed,” they say, 
“ as in other parts of this volume, that the 
author used these words on principle, not as 
abuse, but as expressing matters of fact, as a 
way of bringing before his own mind things 
as they are.” 

Milton, however, is the especial object of 
Mr. Froude’s virtuous abhorrence. He is “ a 
detestable author.” Mr. Froude rejoices to 
learn something of the puritans, because, as 
he says, “ It gives me a better right to hate 
Milton, and accounts for many of the things 
which most disgusted me in his (not in my 
sense of the word) poetry.”—“ A lady told me 
yesterday that you wrote the article of Sacred 
Poetry, &c. I thought it did not come up to 
what I thought your standard of aversion to 
Milton.” Mr. Froude and his editors must be 
delivered over to the secular arm under the 
writ De 'Heretico Comburando for their wilful 
obstinacy in rejecting the infallible sentence 
of the fathers and oecumenical counsels of the 
church poetical, on this article of faith. There 
is no room for mercy. They did not belong 
to the audience, meet but few, to whom the im¬ 
mortal addressed himself—to that little com¬ 
pany to which alone it is reserved to estimate 
the powers of such a mind, and reverently to 
notice its defects. They were of that multi¬ 
tude who have to make their choice between 
repeating the established creed and holding 
their peace. Why are free-thinkers in litera¬ 
ture to be endured more than in religion 1 
The guilt of liberalism has clearly been con¬ 
tracted by this rash judgment; and Professor 
Tholuck being the witness, it exposes the cri¬ 
minals and the whole society of Oriel, nay, 
the entire University itself, to the diffusive 
indignation of all who cling to the Catholic 
faith in poetry. 

There are much better things in Mr. Froude’s 


book than the preceding quotations might ap 
pear to promise. If given as specimens of 
his power, they would do gross injustice to a 
good and able man, a ripe scholar, and a de¬ 
vout Christian. But as illustrations of the 
temper and opinions of those who now sit in 
Wycliffe’s seat, they are neither unfair nor 
unimportant. And they may also convince all 
whom it concerns, that hitherto, at least, Ox¬ 
ford has not given birth to a new race of 
giants, by whom the evangelical founders and 
missionaries of the Church of England will be 
expelled from their ancient dominion, or the 
Protestant world excluded from the light of 
day and the free breath of heaven. 

Whenever the time shall be ripe for writing 
the ecclesiastical history of the last and the 
present age, a curious chapter may be devoted 
to the rise and progress of the Evangelical 
body in England from the days of Whitfield to 
our own. It will convey many important les¬ 
sons. It will manifest the irresistible power 
of the doctrines of the Reformation when pro¬ 
claimed with honesty and zeal, even though 
its teachers be unskilled in those studies which 
are essential to a complete and comprehen¬ 
sive theology. It will show that infirmities 
which, not without some reason, offend the 
more cultivated, and disgust the more fasti¬ 
dious members of the Catholic Church amongst 
us, are but as the small dust in the balance, 
when weighed against the mighty energy of 
those cardinal truths in the defence of which 
Wycliffe and Luther, Knox and Calvin, Ridley 
and Latimer, lived and laboured, and died. 
It may also prove that recondite learning, deep 
piety and the purest virtue may be all com¬ 
bined in bosoms which are yet contracted by 
narrow and unsuspected prejudices. But, 
above all, it may teach mutual charity; admo¬ 
nishing men to listen with kindness and self¬ 
distrust even to each other’s extravagant 
claims to an exclusive knowledge of the Di¬ 
vine will, and the exclusive possession of the 
Divine favour. 


D’AUBIGNE’S HISTORY OF THE GREAT 
REFORMATION.* 

[Edinburgh Review, 1839.] 


English literature is singularly defective in 
whatever relates to the Reformation in Ger¬ 
many and Switzerland, and to the lives of the 
great men by whom it was accomplished. A 
native of this island who would know any 
thing to the purpose, of Reuchlin or Hutten, or 
Luther or Melancthon, of Zuingle, Bucer or 
CEcolampadius, of Calvin or Farel, must be¬ 
take himself to other languages than his own. 

* History of the Great Reformation of the Sixteenth 
Century, in Germany, Switzerland, fyc. By J. If. Merle 
D’Aubigne, President of the Theological School of 
Geneva. 8vo. Vol. I. London, 1838. 


To fill this void in our libraries, is an entei 
prise which might stimulate the zeal, and 
establish the reputation of the ripest student 
of Ecclesiastical History amongst us. In no 
other field could he discover more ample re¬ 
sources for narratives of dramatic interest; 
for the delineation of characters contrasted in 
every thing except their common design; for 
exploring the influence of philosophy, arts, and 
manners, on the fortunes of mankind; and for 
reverently tracing the footsteps of Divine Pro¬ 
vidence, moving among the ways and works 
of men, imparting dignity to events otherwise 









LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION. 


39 


unimportant, and a deep significance to occur¬ 
rences in any other view as trivial as a border 
raid, or the palaver of an African village. 

Take, for example, the life of Ulric de Hut- 
ten, a noble, a warrior, and a rake; a theolo¬ 
gian withal, and a reformer; and at the same 
time the author, or one of the authors, of a 
satire to be classed amongst the most effective 
which the world has ever seen. Had the 
recreative powers of Walter Scott been exer¬ 
cised on Hutten’s story, how familiar would 
all Christendom have been with the stern 
Baron of Franconia, and Ulric, his petulant 
boy; with the fat Abbot of Foulde driving the 
fiery youth by penances and homilies to range 
a literary vagabond on the face of the earth; 
with the burgomaster of Frankfort, avenging 
by a still more formidable punishment the 
pasquinade which had insulted his civic dig¬ 
nity. How vivid would be the image of Hut- 
ten at the siege of Pavia, soothing despair 
itself by writing his own epitaph; giving com¬ 
bat to five Frenchmen for the glory of Maxi¬ 
milian; and receiving from the delighted em¬ 
peror the frugal reward of a poetic crown. 
Then would have succeeded the court and 
princely patronage of “ the Pope of Mentz,” 
and the camp and the castle of the Lord of 
Sickengen, until the chequered scene closed 
with Ulric’s death-bed employment of pro¬ 
ducing a satire on his stupid physician. All 
things were welcome to Hutten; arms and 
love, theology and debauchery, a disputation 
with the Thomists, a controversy with Eras¬ 
mus, or a war to.the knife with the dunces of 
his age. His claim to have written the Epis- 
tolze Obscurorum Virorum, has, indeed, been 
disputed, though with little apparent reason. 
It is at least clear that he asserted his own 
title, and that no other candidate for that equi¬ 
vocal honour united in himself the wit and 
learning, the audacity and licentiousness, which 
successively adorn and disfigure that extraor¬ 
dinary collection. Neither is it quite just to 
exclude the satirist from the list of those who 
lent a material aid to the Reformation. It is 
not, certainly, by the heartiest or the most 
contemptuous laugh that dynasties, whether 
civil or religious, are subverted; but it would 
be unfair to deny altogether to Hutten the 
praise of having contributed by his merciless 
banter to the successes of wiser and better men 
than himself. To set on edge the teeth of the 
Ciceronians by the Latinity of the correspond¬ 
ents of the profound Ortuinus, was but a plea¬ 
sant jest; but it was something more to confer 
an immorality of ridicule on the erudite doc¬ 
tors who seriously apprehended, from the study 
of Greek and Hebrew, the revival at once of 
the worship of Minerva, and of the rite of cir¬ 
cumcision. It was in strict satirical justice, 
that characters were assigned to these sages 
in a farce as broad as was ever drawn by 
Aristophanes or Moliere; and which was des¬ 
titute neither of their riotous mirth, nor even 
of some of that deep wisdom which it was 
their pleasure to exhibit beneath that mask. 

Much as Luther, himself, asper, incohirfd 
gravitate jocum tentavit, he received with little 
relish these sallies of his facetious ally; whom 
he not only censured for employing the lan¬ 


guage of reproach and insult, but, harder still, 
described as a buffoon. It is, perhaps, well 
for the dignity of the stern reformer that the 
taunt was unknown to the object of it; for, 
great as he was, Hutten would not have spared 
him; and as the quiver of few satirists has 
been stored with keener or more envenomed 
shafts, so, few illustrious men have exposed 
to such an assailant a greater number of vul¬ 
nerable points. But of these, or of his other 
private habits, little is generally recorded. 
History having claimed Luther for her own, 
biography has yielded to the pretensions of 
her more stately sister; and the domestic and 
interior life of the antagonist of Leo and of 
Charles yet remains to be written. The mate- 
.rials are abundant, and of the highest interest;— 
a collection of letters scarcely less voluminous 
than those of Voltaire; the Colloquia Mensalia, 
in some parts of more doubtful authenticity, 
yet, on the whole, a genuine record of his con¬ 
versation ; his theological writings, a mine of 
egotisms of the richest ore; and the works of 
Melancthon, Seckendorf, Cochloeus, Erasmus, 
and many others, who flourished in an age 
when, amongst learned men, to write and to 
live were almost convertible terms. The vo¬ 
lume whose title-page we have, trail scribed, is, 
in fact, an unfinished life of Luther, closing 
with his appeal from the pope to a general 
council. We have selected it as the most ela¬ 
borate, from a long catalogue of works on the 
Reformation, recently published on the - conti¬ 
nent, by the present inheritors of the princi¬ 
ples and passions which first agitated Europe 
in the beginning of the sixteenth century. By 
far the most amusing of the series is the col¬ 
lection of Lutheriana by M. Michelet, which 
we are bound to notice with especial gratitude, 
as affording a greater number of valuable 
references than all other books of the same 
kind put together. It was drawn up as a 
relaxation from those severer studies on which 
M. Michelet’s historical fame depends. But 
the pastime of some men is worth far more 
than the labours of the rest; and this compila¬ 
tion has every merit but that of an appropriate 
title; for an auto-biography it assuredly is not, 
in any of the senses, accurate or popular, of 
that much abused word. Insulated in our 
habits and pursuits, not less than in our geo¬ 
graphical position, it is but tardily that, within 
the entrenchment of our four seas, we sympa¬ 
thize with the intellectual movements of the 
nations which dwell beyond them. Many, 
however, are the motives, of at least equal 
force in these islands as in the old and new 
continents of the Christian world, for divert¬ 
ing the eye from the present to the past, from 
those who would now reform, to those, who 
first reformed, the churches of Europe. Or, if 
graver reasons could not be found, it is beyond 
all dispute that the professors of Wittemburg, 
three hundred years ago, formed a group as 
much more entertaining than those of Oxford 
at present, as the contest with Dr. Eck ex¬ 
ceeded in interest the squabble with Dr. 
Hampden. ♦ 

The old Adam in Martin Luther (a favourite 
subject of his discourse) was a very formida¬ 
ble personage; lodged ir\ a bodilv frame of 



40 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


surpassing vigour, solicited by vehement appe¬ 
tites, and alive to all the passions by which 
man is armed for offensive or defensive war¬ 
fare with his fellows. In accordance with a 
general law, that temperament was sustained 
by nerves which shrunk neither from the 
endurance nor the infliction of necessary pain; 
and by a courage which rose at the approach 
of difficulty, and exulted in the presence of 
danger. A rarer prodigality of nature com¬ 
bined with these endowments an inflexible 
reliance on the conclusions of his own under¬ 
standing, and on the energy of his own will. 
He came forth on the theatre of life another 
Samson Agonistes “with plain heroic magni¬ 
tude of mind, and celestial vigour armed;” 
ready to wage an unequalled combat with the 
haughtiest of the giants of Gath; dr to shake 
down, though it were on his own head, the 
columns of the proudest of her temples. Viewed 
in his belligerent aspect, he might have seemed 
a being cut off from the common brotherhood 
of mankind, and bearing from on high a com¬ 
mission to bring to pass the remote ends of 
Divine benevolence, by means appalling to 
* human guilt and to human weakness. But 
he was reclaimed into the bosom of the great 
family of man, by bonds fashioned in strength 
and number proportioned to the vigour of the 
propensities they were intended to control. 
There brooded over him a constitutional me¬ 
lancholy, sometimes engendering sadness, but 
more often giving birth to dreams so wild, that, 
if vivified by the imagination of Dante, they 
might have passed into visions as awful and 
majestic as those of the Inferno . As these 
mists rolled away, bright gleams of sunshine 
took their place, and that robust mind yielded 
itself to social enjoyments, with the hearty 
relish, the broad humour, and the glorious 
profusion of sense and nonsense, which be¬ 
token the relaxations of those who are for the 
moment abdicating the mastery, to become the 
companions of ordinary man. Luther had 
other and yet more potent spells with which 
to exorcise the demons who haunted him. 
He had ascertained and taught that the spirit 
of darkness abhors sweet sounds not less than 
light itself; for music, while it chases away 
the evil suggestions, effectually baffles the 
wiles of the tempter. His lute, and hand, and 
voice, accompanying his own solemn melo¬ 
dies, were therefore raised to repel the more 
vehement aggressions of the enemy of man¬ 
kind; whose feebler assaults he encountered 
by studying the politics of a rookery, by assign¬ 
ing to each beautiful creation of his flower¬ 
beds an appropriate sylph or genius, by the 
company of his Catherine de Bora, and the 
sports of their saucy John and playful Mag¬ 
dalene. 

The name of Catherine has long enjoyed a 
wide but doubtful celebrity. She was a lady 
of noble birth, and was still young when she 
renounced the ancient faith, her convent, and 
her vows, to become the wife of Martin Luther. 
From this portentous union of a monk and 
nun, the “obscure men” confidently predicted 
the birth of Antichrist; while the wits and 
scholars greeted their nuptials with a thick 
hail-storm of epigrams, hymns, and dithvram- 


bics, the learned Eecius himself chiming into 
the loud chorus with an elaborate epithala- 
mium. The bridegroom met the tempest, with 
the spirit of another Benedict, by a counter¬ 
blast of invective and sarcasms, which, after¬ 
wards collected under the head of “ the Lion 
and the Ass,” perpetuated the memory of this 
redoubtable controversy. “My enemies,” he 
exclaimed, “ triumphed. They shouted, Io, lo! 
I was resolved to show that, old and feeble as 
I am, I am not going to sound a retreat. I 
trust I shall do still more to spoil their merri¬ 
ment.” 

This indiscreet, if not criminal marriage, 
searcely admitted a more serious defence. 
Yet Luther was not a man to do any thing 
which he was not prepared to justify. He had 
inculcated on others the advantages of the 
conjugal state, and was bound to enforce his 
precepts by his example. The war of the 
peasants had brought reproach on the princi¬ 
ples of the Reformation ; and it was incumbent 
on him to sustain the minds of his followers, 
and to bear his testimony to evangelical truth 
by deeds as well as words. Therefore, it was 
fit that he should marry a nun. Such is the 
logic of inclination, and such the presumption 
of uninterrupted success. “ Dr. Ortuinas” him¬ 
self never lent his venerable sanction to a 
stranger sophistry, than that which could thus 
discover in one great scandal an apology for 
another far more justly offensive. 

Catherine was a very pretty women, if Hob 
bein’s portrait may be believed; although even 
her personal charms have been rudely im¬ 
pugned by her husband’s enemies, in grave 
disquisitions devoted to that momentous ques¬ 
tion. Better still, she was a faithful and affec¬ 
tionate wife. But there is a no less famous 
Catherine to whom she bore a strong family 
resemblance. She brought from her nunnery 
an anxious mind, a shrewish temper, and great 
volubility of speech. Luther’s arts were not 
those of Petruchio. With him reverence for 
woman was at once a natural instinct and a 
point of doctrine. He observed, that when the 
first woman was brought to the first man to 
receive her name, he called her not wife, but 
mother—“Eve, the mother of all living”—a 
word, he says, “more eloquent than ever fell 
from the lips of Demosthenes.” So, like a 
wise and kind-hearted man, when his Cathe¬ 
rine prattled, he smiled; when she frowned, 
he playfully stole away her anger, and chided 
her anxieties with the gentlest soothing. A 
happier or a more peaceful home was not to 
be found in the land of domestic tenderness. 
Yet, the confession must be made, that, from 
the first to the last, this love-tale is nothing less 
than a case of Isesa majestas against the sove¬ 
reignty of romance. Luther and his bride did 
not meet on either side with the raptures of a 
first affection. He had long before sighed for 
the fair Ave Shonfelden, and she had not con¬ 
cealed her attachment for a certain Jerome 
Baungartner. Ave had bestowed herself in 
marriage on a physician of Prussia; and be¬ 
fore Luther’s irrevocable vows were pledged, 
Jerome received from his great rival an inti¬ 
mation that he still possessed the heart, and, 
with common activity, might even vet secure 



41 


LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION. 


the hand of Catherine. But honest Jerome was 
not a man to be hurried. He silently resigned 
his pretensions to his illustrious competitor, 
who, even in the moment of success, had the 
discernment to perceive, and the frankness to 
avow, that his love was not of a flaming or 
ungovernable nature. 

“ Nothing on this earth,” said the good Dame 
Ursula Schweickard, with whom Luther board¬ 
ed when at school at Eisenach, “is of such 
inestimable value as a woman’s love.” This 
maxim, recommended more, perhaps, by truth 
than originality, dwelt long on the mind and 
on the tongue of the reformer. To have dis¬ 
missed this or any other text without a com¬ 
mentary would have been abhorrent from his 
temper; and in one of his letters to Catherine 
he thus insists on a kindred doctrine, the con¬ 
verse of the first. “ The greatest favour of 
God is to have a good and pious husband, to 
■whom you can intrust your all, your person, 
and even your life; whose children and yours 
are the same. Catherine, you have a pious 
husband who loves you. You are an empress; 
thank God for it.” His conjugal meditations 
were often in a gayer mood ; as, for example,— 
“If I were going to make love again, I would 
carve an obedient woman out of marble, in 
despair of finding one in any other way.”— 
“ During the first year of our marriage, she 
would sit by my side while I "was at my books, 
and, not having any thing else to say, would 
ask me whether in Prussia the margrave and 
the house steward were not always brothers.— 
Did you say your Pater, Catherine, before you 
began that sermon 1 If you had, I think-you 
would have been forbidden to preach.” He 
addresses her sometimes as my Lord Cathe¬ 
rine, or Catherine the queen, the empress, the 
doctoress; or as Catherine the rich and noble 
Lady of Zeilsdorf, where they had a cottage 
and a few roods of ground. But as age ad¬ 
vanced, these playful sallies were abandoned 
for the following graver and more affectionate 
style. “To the gracious Lady Catherine Luther, 
my dear wife, who vexes herself overmuch, 
grace and peace in the Lord! Dear Cathe¬ 
rine, you should read St. John, and what is 
said in the catechism of the confidence to be 
reposed in God. Indeed, you torment yourself 
as though he were not Almighty, and could 
not produce new Doctors Martin by the score, 
if the old doctor should drown himself in the 
Saal.”—“ There is one who watches over me 
more effectually than thou canst, or than all 
the angels. He sits at the right hand of the 
Father Almighty. Therefore be calm.” 

There were six children of this marriage; 
and it is at once touching and amusing to see 
with what adroitness Luther contrived to gra¬ 
tify at once his tenderness as a father, and his 
taste as a theologian. When the brightening 
eye of one of the urchins round his table con¬ 
fessed the allurements of a downy peach, it 
was “ the image of a soul rejoicing in hope.” 
Over an infant pressed to his mother’s bosom, 
thus moralized the severe but affectionate 
reformer: “That babe and every thing else 
which belongs to us is hated by the pope, by 
Duke George, by their adherents, and by all 


the devils. Yet, dear little fellow, he troubles 
himselt not a whit for all these powerful ene« 
mies, he gayly sucks the breast, looks round 
him with a loud laugh, and lets them storm as 
they like.” There were darker seasons, when 
even theology and polemics gave way to the 
more powerful voice of nature; nor,'indeed, 
has the deepest wisdom any thing to add to his 
lamentation over the bier of his daughter Mag¬ 
dalene. “Such is the power of natural affec¬ 
tion, that I cannot endure this without tears 
and groans, or rather an utter deadness of 
heart. At the bottom of my soul are engraved 
her looks, her words, her gestures, as I gazed 
at her in lifetime and on her death-bed. My 
dutiful, my gentle daughter! Even the death 
of Christ (and what are all deaths compared 
to his?) cannot tear me from this thought as 
it should. She was playful, lovely, and full 
of love!” 

Whatever others may think of these nursery 
tales, we have certain reasons of our own for 
suspecting that there is not, on either side of 
the Tweed, a papa, who will not read the fol¬ 
lowing letter, sent by Luther to his eldest boy 
during the Diet of Augsburg, with more inte¬ 
rest than any of all the five “ Confessions” 
presented to the emperor on that memorable 
occasion. 

"Grace and peace be with thee, my dear 
little boy! I rejoice to find that you are atten¬ 
tive to your lessons and your prayers. Perse¬ 
vere, my child, and when I come home I will 
bring you some pretty fairing. I know of a 
beautiful garden, full of children in golden 
dresses, who run about under the trees, eating 
apples, pears, cherries, nuts, and plums. They 
jump and sing and are full of glee, and they 
have pretty little horses with golden bridles 
and silver saddles, As I went by this garden 
I asked the owner of it who those children 
were, and he told me that they were the good 
children, who loved to say their prayers, and 
to learn their lessons, and who fear God. Then 
I said to him, Dear sir, I have a boy, little John 
Luther; may not he too come to this garden, 
to eat these beautiful apples and pears, to ride 
these pretty little horses, and to play with the 
other children ? And the man said, If he is 
very good, if he says his prayers, and learns 
his lessons cheerfully he may come, and he 
may bring with him little Philip and little 
James. Here they will find fifes and drums 
and other nice instruments to play upon, and 
they shall dance and shoot with little cross¬ 
bows. Then the man showed me in the midst 
of the garden a beautiful meadow to dance ini 
But all this happened in the morning before 
the children had dined; so I could not stay till 
the beginning of the dance, but I said to the 
man, I will go and write to my dear little John, 
and teach him to be goo'd, to say his prayers, 
and learn his lessons, that he may come tc 
this garden. But he has an Aunt Magdalene, 
whom he loves very much,—may he bring her 
with him? The man said, Yes, tell him that 
they may come together. Be good, therefore, 
dear child, and tell Philip and James the same, 
that you may all come and play in this beau¬ 
tiful garden. I commit you to the care of God 

i) 2 






42 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WHITINGS, 


Give my love to your Aunt Magdalene, and 
kiss her for me. From your papa who loves 
you,—Martin Luther.” 

If it is not a sufficient apology for the quo¬ 
tation of this fatherly epistle to say, that it is 
the talk of Martin Luther, a weightier defence 
may he drawn from the remark that it illus¬ 
trates one of his most serious opinions. The 
views commonly received amongst Christians, 
of the nature of the happiness reserved in 
another state of being, for the obedient and 
faithful in this life, he regarded, if not as erro¬ 
neous, yet as resting on no sufficient founda¬ 
tion, and as ill adapted to “ allure to brighter 
worlds.” He thought that the enjoyments of 
heaven had been refined away to such a point 
of evanescent spirituality as to deprive them 
of their necessary attraction; and the allegory 
invented for the delight of little John, was but 
the adaptation to the thoughts of a child of a 
doctrine which he was accustomed to incul¬ 
cate on others, under imagery more elevated 
than that of drums, crossbows and golden 
bridles. 

There is but one step from the nursery to 
the servant’s hall; and they who have borne 
with the parental counsels to little John, may 
endure the following letter respecting an aged 
namesake of his, who was about to quit Lu¬ 
ther’s family: 

“ We must dismiss old John with honour. 
We know that he has always served us faith¬ 
fully and zealously, and as became a Christian 
servant. What have we not given to vaga¬ 
bonds and thankless students who have made 
a bad use of our money 1 So we will not be 
niggardly to so worthy a servant, on whom our 
money will be bestowed in a manner pleasing 
to God. You need not remind me that we are 
not rich. I would gladly give him ten florins, 
if I had them, but do not let it be less than five. 
He is not able to do much for himself. Pray 
help him in any other way you can. Think 
how this money can be raised. There is a 
silver cup that might be pawned. Sure I am 
that God will not desert us. Adieu.” 

Luther’s pleasures were as simple as his 
domestic affections were pure. He wrote 
metrical versions of the Psalms, well described 
by Mr. Hallam, as holding a middle place be¬ 
tween the doggerel of Sternhold and Hopkins, 
and the meretricious ornaments of the later 
versifiers of the Songs of David. He wedded 
to them music of his own, to which the most 
obtuse ear cannot listen without emotion. The 
greatest of the sons of Germany was, in this 
respect, a true child of that vocal land; for 
such was his enthusiasm for the art that he 
assigned to it a place second only to that of 
theology itself. He was also an ardent lover 
of painting, and yielded to Albert Durer the 
homage which he denied to Cajetan and Eras¬ 
mus. His are amongst the earliest works em¬ 
bellished by the aid of the engraver. With the 
birds of his native country he had established 
a' strict intimacy, watching, smiling, and thus 
moralizing over their habits. “ That little 
fellow,” he said of a bird going to roost, “ has 
chosen his shelter, and is quietly rocking him¬ 
self to sleep without a care for to-morrow’s 
lodging, calmly holding by his little twig, and 


leaving God to think for him.” The following 
parable, in a letter to Spalatin, is in a more 
ambitious strain. 

“You are going to Augsburg without having 
taken the auspices, and ignorant when you will 
be allowed to begin. I, on the other hand, am 
in the midst of the Comitia, in the presence of 
illustrious sovereigns, kings, dukes, grandees, 
and nobles, who are solemnly debating affairs 
of state, and making the air ring with their 
deliberations and decrees. Instead of imprison¬ 
ing themselves in those royal caverns which 
you call palaces they.hold their assemblies in 
the sunshine, with the arch of heaven for 
their tent, substituting for costly tapestries the 
foliage of trees, where they enjoy their liberty. 
Instead of confining themselves in parks and 
pleasure-grounds, they range over the earth to 
its utmost limits. They detest the stupid lux¬ 
uries of silk and embroidery, but all dress in 
the same colour, and put on very much the 
same looks. To say the truth, they all wear 
black, and all sing one tune. It is a song 
formed of a single note, with no variation but 
what is produced by the pleasing contrast of 
young and old voices. I have seen and heard 
nothing of their emperor. They have a su¬ 
preme contempt for the quadruped employed 
by our gentry, having a much better method 
for setting the heaviest artillery at defiance. 
As far as I have been able to understand their 
resolutions by the aid of an interpreter, they 
have unanimously determined to wage war 
through the whole year against the wheat, oats 
and barley, and the best corn and fruits of 
every kind. There is reason to fear, that 
victory will attend them every where, for they 
are a skilful and crafty race of warriors, equally 
expert in collecting booty by violence and by 
surprise. It has afforded me great pleasure to 
attend their assemblies as an idle looker on. 
The hope I cherish of the triumphs of their 
valour over wheat and barley, and every other 
enemy, renders me the sincere and faithful 
friend of these patres patriae, these saviours of 
the commonwealth. If I could serve them by 
a wish, I would implore their deliverance from 
their present ugly name of crows. This is 
nonsense, but there is some seriousnesss in it. 
It is a jest which helps me to drive away painful 
thoughts.” 

The love of fables, which Luther thus in¬ 
dulged at one of the most eventful eras of his 
life, was amongst his favourite amusements. 
.dEsop lay on the same table with the book of 
Psalms, and the two translations proceeded 
alternately. Except the Bible, he declared 
that he knew no better book; and pronounced 
it not to be the work of any single author, but 
the fruit of the labours of the greatest minds 
in all ages. It supplied him with endless jests 
and allusions; as for example,—“The dog in 
charge of the butcher’s tray, unable to defend 
it from the avidity of other curs, said,—Well, 
then, I may as well have my share of the meat, 
and fell-to accordingly; which is precisely 
what the emperor is doing with the property of 
the church.” 

Few really great men, indeed, have hazarded 
a larger number of jokes in the midst of a cir¬ 
cle of note-taking associates. They have left 




43 


LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION. 


on record the following amidst many other 
memorabilia :—“ God made the priest. The 
devil set about an imitation, but he made the 
tonsure too large, and produced a monk.” A 
cup composed of five hoops or rings of glass 
of different colours circulated at'his table. 
Eisleben, an Antinomian, was of the party. 

Luther pledged him in the following words :_ 

“ Within the second of these rings lie the ten 
commandments ; within the next ring the creed; 
then comes the paternoster; the catechism lies 
at the bottom.” So saying, he drank it off. 
When Eislebe’n’s turn came, he emptied the 
cup only down to the beginning of the seconc. 
ring. “Ah!” said Luther, “I knew that he 
would stick at the commandments, and there¬ 
fore would not reach the creed, the Lord’s 
prayer, or the catechism.” 

Ii must be confessed, however, that Luther’s 
pleasantries are less remarkable for wit or 
delicacy than for the union of strong sense 
and honest merriment. They were the care¬ 
less, though not inconsiderate sport of a free- 
spoken man, in a circle where religion and 
modesty, protected by an inbred reverence, did 
not seek the doubtful defence of conventional 
outworks. But pensive thoughts were the more 
habitual food of his overburdened mind. 
Neither social enjoyments, nor the tenderness 
of domestic life, could ever long repel the 
melancholy which brooded over him. It breaks 
out in every part of his correspondence, and 
tinges all his recorded conversation. “Be¬ 
cause,” he says, “my manner is sometimes 
gay and joyous, many think that I am always 
treading on roses. God knows what is in my 
heart. There is nothing in this life which 
gives me pleasure : I am tired of it. May the 
Lord come quickly and take me hence. Let 
him come to his final judgment—I wait the 
blow. Let him hurl his thunders, that I may 
be at rest. Forty years more life! I would 
not purchase Paradise at such a price.” Yet, 
with this lassitude of the world, his contempla¬ 
tions of death were solemn, even to sadness. 

“ How gloriously,” said his friend, Dr. Jonas, 

“ does St. Paul speak of his own death. I can¬ 
not enter into this.” “It appears to me,” re¬ 
plied Luther, “ that when meditating on that 
subject, even St. Paul himself could not have 
felt all the energy which possessed him when 
he wrote. I preach, write, and talk about 
dying, with a greater firmness than I really 
possess, or than others ascribe to me.” In 
common with all men of this temperament, he 
was profuse in extolling the opposite disposi¬ 
tion. “ The birds,” he says, “ must fly over 
our heads, but why allow them to roost in our 
hairl” “ Gayety and a light heart, in all vir¬ 
tue and decorum, are the best medicine for the 
young, or rather for all. I who have passed 
my life in dejection and gloomy thoughts, nor 
catch at enjoyment, come from what quarter 
it may, and even seek for it. Criminal plea¬ 
sure, indeed, comes from Satan, but that which 
we find in the society of good and pious men 
is approved by God. Ride, hunt with your 
friends, amuse yourself in their company. 
Solitude and melancholy are poison. They 
are deadly to all, but, above all, to the young. 
The sombre character of Luther’s mind can¬ 


not be correctly understood by those who are 
wholly ignorant of the legendary traditions of 
his native land. This remark is made and 
illustrated by M. Henry Heine, with that curious 
knowledge ol such lore as none but a denizen 
of Germany could acquire. Iu the mines of 
Mansfield, at Eisenach and Erfurth, the visible 
and invisible worlds were almost equally pop¬ 
ulous ; and the training of youth was not merely 
a discipline for the future offices of life, but an 
initiation into mysteries as impressive, though 
not quite so sublime, as those of Eleusis. The 
unearthly inhabitants of every land are near 
akin to the human cultivators of the soil. The 
killkropfF of Saxony differed from a fairy or a 
hamadryad as a Saxon differs from a French¬ 
man or a Greek; the thin essences by which 
these spiritual bodies are sustained being dis¬ 
tilled according to their various national tastes, 
from the dews of Hymettus, the light wines of 
Provence, and the strong beer of Germany. At 
the fireside around which Luther’s family 
drew, in his childhood, there gathered a race 
of imps who may be considered as the presid¬ 
ing genii of the turnspit and the stable ; witches 
expert in the right use of the broomstick, but 
incapable of perverting it into a locomotive 
engine; homely in gait, coarse in feature, 
sordid in their habits, with canine appetites, 
and superhuman powers, and, for the most 
oart, eaten up with misanthropy. When, in his 
twentieth year, Luther for the first time opened 
the Bible, and read there of spiritual agents, 
the inveterate enemies of our race, these spectra 
were projected on a mind over which such 
egends had already exercised an indestructible 
influence. Satan and his angels crowded upon 
lis imagination, neither as shapeless presences 
casting their gloomy shadows on the soul, nor 
as mysterious impersonations of her foul and 
cruel desires, nor as warriors engaged with 
the powers of light and love, and holiness, in 
the silent motionless war of antagonist ener¬ 
gies. Luther’s devils were a set of athletic, 
cross-grained, ill-conditioned wretches, with 
vile shapes and fiendish faces; who, like the 
monsters of dame Ursula’s kitchen, gave buffet 
for buffet, hate for hate, and joke for joke. His 
Satan was not only something less than arch¬ 
angel ruined, but was quite below the society 
of that Prince of Darkness, whom mad Tom 
in Lear declares to be a gentleman. Possess¬ 
ing a sensitive rather than a creative imagina¬ 
tion, Luther transferred the visionary lore, 
drawn from these humble sources, to the 
machinery of the great epic of revelation, with 
but little change or embellishment; and thus 
contrived to reduce to the level of very vulgar 
prose some of the noblest conceptions of in¬ 
spired poetry. 

At the castle of Wartburg, his Patmos, where 
he dwelt the willing prisoner of his friendly 
sovereign, the reformer chanced to have a 
plate of nuts at his supper-table. How many 
of them he swallowed, there is, unfortunately, 
no Boswell to tell; yet, perhaps, not a few— 
for, as he slept, the nuts, animated as it would 
seem by the demon of the pantry, executed a 
sort of waltz, knocking against each other, and 
against the slumberer’s bedstead; when, lo! 
the staircase became possessed bv a hundred 




44 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


barrels rolling up and down, under the guid¬ 
ance, probably, of the imp of the spigot. Yet 
all approach to Luther’s room was barred by 
chains and by an iron door—vain intrench- 
ments against Satan! He arose, solemnly 
defied the fiend, repeated the eighth Psalm, 
and resigned himself to sleep. Another visit 
from the same fearful adversary at Nurem- 
burg led to the opposite result. The reformer 
flew from his bed to seek refuge in society. 
Once upon a time, Carlostadt, the sacrament- 
arian, being in the pulpit, saw a tall man enter 
the church, and take his seat by one of the 
burgesses of the town. The intruder then 
retired, betook himself to the preacher’s house, 
and exhibited frightful symptoms of a disposi¬ 
tion to break all the bones of his child. Think¬ 
ing better of it, however, he left with the boy a 
message for Carlostadt, that he might be looked 
for again in three days. It is needless to add 
that, on the third day, there was an end of the 
poor preacher, and of his attacks on Luther 
and con substantiation. In the cloisters at 
Wittemburg, Luther himself heard that pecu¬ 
liar noise which attests the devil’s presence. 
It came from behind a stove, resembling, for 
all the world, the sound of throwing a fagot on 
the fire. This sound, however, is not invaria¬ 
ble. An old priest, in the attitude of prayer, 
heard Satan behind him, grunting like a whole 
herd of swine. “ Ah! ha! master devil,” said 
the priest, “you have your deserts. There 
was a time when you were a beautiful angel, 
and there you are turned into a rascally hog.” 
The priest’s devotions proceeded without fur¬ 
ther disturbance; “ for,” observed Luther, 
“ there is nothing the devil can bear so little as 
contempt.” He once saw and even touched a 
killkropff or supposititious child. This was 
at Dessau. The deviling,—for it had no other 
parent than Satan himself,—was about twelve 
years old, and looked exactly like any other 
boy. But the unlucky brat could do nothing 
but eat. He consumed as much food as four 
ploughmen. When things went ill in the 
house, his laugh was to be heard all over it. 
If matters went smoothly, there was no peace 
for his screaming. Luther sportively asserts 
that he recommended the elector to have this 
scapegrace thrown into the Moldau, as it was 
a mere lump of flesh without a soul. His 
visions sometimes assumed a deeper signifi¬ 
cance, if not a loftier aspect. In the year 1496, 
a frightful monster was discovered in the Tiber. 
It had the head of an ass, an emblem of the 
pope; for the church being a spiritual body 
incapable of a head, the pope, who had auda¬ 
ciously assumed that character, was fitly repre¬ 
sented under this asinine figure. The right 
hand resembled an elephant’s foot, typifying 
the papal tyranny over the weak and timid. 
The right foot was like an ox’s hoof shadow¬ 
ing forth the spiritual oppression exercised by 
doctors, confessors, nuns, monks, and scholas¬ 
tic theologians; while the left foot armed with 
griffin’s claws, could mean nothing else than 
the various ministers of the pope’s civil autho¬ 
rity. How far Luther believed in the exist¬ 
ence of the monster, whose mysterious signifi¬ 
cations he thus interprets, it would not be easy 
to decide. Yet it is difficult to read his expo¬ 


sition, and to suppose it a mere pleasantry. 
So constantly was he haunted with this mid¬ 
night crew of devils, as to have raised a se¬ 
rious doubt of his sanity, which even Mr. Hal- 
lam does not entirely discountenance. Yet the 
hypothesis is surely gratuitous. Intense study 
deranging the digestive organs of a man, 
whose bodily constitution required vigorous 
exercise, and whose mind had been early stored 
with such dreams as we have mentioned, suffi¬ 
ciently explains the restless importunity of the 
goblins amongst whom he lived. It is easier 
for a man to be in advance of his age on any 
other subject than this. It may be doubted 
whether the nerves of Seneca or Pliny would 
have been equal to a solitary evening walk by 
the Lake Avemus. What wonder, then, if 
Martin Luther was convinced that suicides 
fall not by their own hands, but by those of 
diabolical emissaries, who really adjust the 
cord or point the knife—that particular spots, 
as, for example, the pool near the summit of 
the Mons Pilatus, were desecrated to Satan— 
that the wailings of his victims are to be heard 
in the howlings of the night wind—or that the 
throwing a stone into a pond in his own neigh¬ 
bourhood, immediately provoked such strug¬ 
gles of the evil spirit imprisoned below the 
water, as shook the neighbouring country like 
an earthquake 1 

The mental phantasmagoria of so illustrious 
a man are an exhibition to which no one who 
reveres his name would needlessly direct an 
unfriendly, or an idle gaze. But the infirmi¬ 
ties of our nature often afford the best mea¬ 
sure of its strength. To estimate the strength 
by which temptation is overcome, you must 
ascertain the force of the propensities to which 
it is addressed. Amongst the elements of Lu¬ 
ther’s character was an awe verging towards 
idolatry, for all things, whether in the works 
of God or in the institutions of man, which 
can be regarded as depositories of the Divine 
power, or as delegates of the Divine authority. 
From pantheism, the disease of imaginations 
at once devout and unhallowed, he was pre¬ 
served in youth by his respect for the doctrines 
of the church; and,-in later life, by his abso¬ 
lute surrender of his own judgment to the text 
of the sacred canon. But as far as a panthe¬ 
istic habit of thought and feeling can consist 
with the most unqualified belief in the uncom- 
municable unity of the Divine nature, such 
thoughts and feelings were habitual to him. 
The same spirit which solemnly acknowledged 
the existence, whilst it abhorred the use, of the 
high faculties, which, according to the popular 
faith, the foul fiends of earth, and air, and 
water, at once enjoy and pervert, contem¬ 
plated with almost prostrate reverence the 
majesty and the hereditary glories of Rome; 
and the apostolical succession of her pontiff, 
with kings and emperors of his tributaries, the 
Catholic hierarchy as his vicegerents, and the 
human mind his universal empire. To brave 
the vengeance of such a dynasty, wielding the 
mysterious keys which close the gates of hell 
and open the portals of heaven, long appeared 
to Luther an impious audacity, of which no¬ 
thing less than wo, eternal and unutterable, 
would be the sure and appropriate penalty 



LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION. 


15 


For a man of his temperament to hush these 
superstitious terrors, and to abjure the golden 
idol to which the adoring eyes of all nations, 
kindred, and languages were directed, was a 
self-conquest, such as none but the most heroic 
minds can achieve; and to which even they 
are unequal, unless sustained by an invisible 
but omnipotent arm. For no error can be 
more extravagant than that which would re¬ 
duce Martin Luther to the rank of a coarse 
spiritual demagogue. The deep self-distrust 
which, for ten successive years, postponed his 
irreconcilable war with Rome, clung to him 
to the last; nor was he ever unconscious of 
the dazzling splendour of the pageantry which 
his own hand had contributed so largely to 
overthrow. There is no alloy of affectation in 
the following avowal, taken from one of his 
letters to Erasmus : 

“You must, indeed, feel yourself in some 
measure awed in the presence of a succession 
of learned men, and by the consent of so many 
ages, during which flourished scholars so con¬ 
versant in sacred literature, and martyrs illus¬ 
trious by so many miracles. To all this must 
be added the more modern theologians, uni¬ 
versities, bishops, and popes. On their side 
are arrayed learning, genius, numbers, dignity, 
station, power, sanctity, miracles, and what 
not. On mine, Wycliff and Laurentius Yalla, 
and though you forget to mention him, Augus¬ 
tine also. Then comes Luther, a mean man, 
born but yesterday, supported only by a few 
friends, who have neither learning, nor genius, 
nor greatness, nor.sanctity, nor miracles. Put 
them altogether, and they have not wit enough 
to cure a spavined horse. What are they? 
What the wolf said of the nightingale—a 
voice, and nothing else. I confess it is with 
reasdn you pause in such a presence as this. 
For ten years together I hesitated myself. 
Could I believe that this Troy, which had tri¬ 
umphed over so many assaults would fall at 
last? I call God to witness, that I should have 
persisted in my fears, and should have hesi¬ 
tated until now, if truth had not compelled me 
to speak. You may well believe that my heart 
is not rock; and, if it were, yet so many are 
the waves and storms which have been beaten 
upon it, that it must have yielded when the 
whole weight of this authority came thunder¬ 
ing on my head, like a deluge ready to over¬ 
whelm me.” 

The same feelings were expressed at a later 
time in the following words: 

“I daily perceive how difficult it is to over¬ 
come long cherished scruples. Oh, what pain 
it has cost me, though the Scripture is on my 
side, to defend myself to my own heart for 
having dared singly to resist the pope, and to 
denounce him as antichrist! What have been 
the afflictions of my bosom! How often, in 
the bitterness of my soul, have I pressed my¬ 
self with the papist’s argument, — Art thou 
alone wise? are all others in error? have they 
been mistaken for so long a time? What if 
you are yourself mistaken, and are dragging 
with you so many souls into eternal condem¬ 
nation? Thus did I reason with myself, till 
Jesus Christ, by his own infallible word, 
tranquillized my heart, and sustained it against 


this argument, as a reef of rocks thrown up 
against the waves laughs at all their fury.” 

He who thus acknowledged the influence, 
while he defied the despotism of human autho¬ 
rity, was self-annihilated in the presence of his * 
Maker. “ I have learned,” he says, “ from the 
Holy Scriptures that it is a perilous and a fear¬ 
ful thing to speak in the house of God ; to ad¬ 
dress those who will appear in judgment 
against us, when at the last day we shall be 
found in his presence; when the gaze of the 
angels shall be directed to us, -when every 
creature shall behold the divine Word, and 
shall listen till He speaks. Truly, when I 
think of this, I have no wish but to be silent, 
and to cancel all that I have written. It is a 
fearful thing to be called to render to God an 
account of every idle word.” Philip Melancthon 
occasionally endeavoured, by affectionate ap¬ 
plause, to sustain and encourage the mind 
which was thus bow r ed down under the sense 
of unworthiness. But the praise, even of the 
chosen friend of his bosom, found no echo 
there. He rejected it, kindly indeed, but with 
a rebuke so earnest and passionate, as to show 
that the commendations of him whom he loved 
and valued most, -were unwelcome. They 
served but to deepen the depressing conscious¬ 
ness of ill desert, inseparable from his lofty 
conceptions of the duties which had been as¬ 
signed to him. In Luther, as in other men, the 
stern and heroic virtues demanded for their 
support that profound lowliness which might 
at first appear the most opposed to their de¬ 
velopment. The eye which often turns in¬ 
ward with self-complacency, or habitually looks 
round for admiration, is never long or stead¬ 
fastly fixed on any more elevated object. It 
is permitted to no man at once to court the ap¬ 
plauses of the world, and to challenge a place 
amongst the generous and devoted benefactors* 
of his species. The enervating spell of vanity, 
so fatal to many a noble intellect, exercised 
no perceptible control over Martin Luther. 
Though conscious of the rare endowments he 
had received from Providence (of which that 
very consciousness was not the least impor¬ 
tant) the secret of his strength lay in the 
heartfelt persuasion, that his superiority to 
other men gave him no title to their com¬ 
mendations, and in his abiding sense of the 
little value of such praises. The growth of 
his social affections was impeded by self-re¬ 
garding thoughts; and he could endure the 
frowns and even the coldness of those whose 
approving smiles he judged himself unworthy 
to receive, and did not much care to win. His 
was not that feeble benevolence which leans 
for support, or depends for existence, on the 
sympathy of those for whom it labours. Re¬ 
proofs, sharp, unsparing, and pitiless, were 
familiar to his tongue, and to his pen. Such 
a censure he had directed to the archbishop of 
Mentz, which Spalatin, in the name of their 
common friend and sovereign, the elector 
Frederic, implored him to suppress. “No,” 
replied Luther, “ in defence of the fold of Christ, 

I will oppose to the utmost of my power, this 
ravening wolf, as I have resisted others. 1 
send you my book, which was ready before 
your letter reached me. It has not induce 1 




40 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


me to alter a word. The question is decided, 
I cannot heed your objections.” They were 
such, however, as most men would have thought 
reasonable enough. Here are some of the 
words of which neither friend nor sovereign 
could dissuade the publication. “Did you 
imagine that Luther was dead 1 Believe it 
not. He lives under the protection of that God 
who has already humbled the pope, and is 
ready to begin with the archbishop of Mentz a 
game for which few are prepared.” To the 
severe admonition which followed, the princely 
prelate answered in his own person, in terms 
of the most humble deference, leaving to 
Capito, his minister, the ticklish office of re¬ 
monstrating against the rigour with which the 
lash had been applied. But neither soothing 
nor menaces could abate Luther’s confidence 
in his cause, and in himself. “ Christianity,” 
he replies, “ is open and honest. It sees things 
as they are, and proclaims them as they are. 
I am for tearing off every mask, for managing 
nothing, for extenuating nothing, for shutting 
the eyes to nothing, that truth may be transpa¬ 
rent and unadulterated, and may have a free 
course. Think you that Luther is a man who 
is content to shut his eyes if you can but lull 
him by a few cajoleries 1” “ Expect every thing 
from my affections ; but reverence, nay tremble 
for the’ faith.” George, duke of Saxony, the 
near kinsman of Frederic, and one of the most 
determined enemies of the Reformation, not 
seldom provoked and encountered the same 
resolute defiance. “ Should God call me to 
Wittemburg,I would go there, though it should 
rain Duke Georges for nine days together, and 
each new duke should be nine times more 
furious than this.” “ Though exposed daily to 
death in the midst of my enemies, and without 
any human resource, I never in my life de¬ 
spised any thing so heartily as these stupid 
threats of Duke George, and his associates in 
folly. I write in the morning fasting, with my 
heart filled with holy confidence. Christ 
lives and reigns, and I, too, shall live and 
reigr ” 

Here is a more comprehensive denunciation 
of the futility of the attempts made to arrest 
his course. 

“ To the language of the fathers, of men, of 
angels, and of devils, I oppose neither antiquity 
nor numbers, but the single word of the 
Eternal Majesty, even that gospel which they 
are themselves compelled to acknowledge. 
Here is my hold, my stand, my resting-place, 
my glory, and my triumph. Hence I assault 
popes, Thomists, Henrycists, sophists, and all 
the gates of hell. I little heed the words of 
men, whatever may have been their sanctity, 
nor am I anxious about tradition or doubtful 
customs. The word of God is above all. If 
the Divine Majesty be on my side, what care I 
for the rest, though a thousand Augustines, 
and a thousand Cyprians, and a thousand such 
churches as those of Henry, should rise against 
me ? God can neither err nor deceive. August¬ 
ine, Cyprian, and all the saints, can err, and 
have erred.” 

“ At Leipsic, at Augsburg, and at Worms, 
my spirit was as free as a flower of the field.” 
•'* lie whom God moves to speak, expresses 


himself openly and freely, careless whether he 
is alone, or has others at his side. So spake 
Jeremiah, and I may boast of having done the 
same. God has not for the last thousand 
years bestowed on any bishop such great gifts 
as on me, and it is right that I should extol his 
gifts. Truly, I am indignant with myself that 
I do not heartily rejoice and give thanks. Now 
and then I raise a faint hymn of thanksgiving, 
and feebly praise Him. Well! live or die, 
Domini sumus. You may take the word either 
in the genitive or in the nominative case. 
Therefore, Sir Doctor, be firm.” 

This buoyant spirit sometimes expressed it¬ 
self in a more pithy phrase. When he first 
wrote against indulgences, Dr. Jerome Schurf 
said to him, “ What are you about 1 they won’t 
allow it.” “ What if they must allow it V’ was 
the peremptory answer. 

The preceding passages, while they illustrate 
his indestructible confidence in himself as the 
minister, and in his cause as the behest, of 
Heaven, are redolent of that unseemly violence 
and asperity which are attested at once by the 
regrets of his friends, and the reproaches of his 
enemies, and his own acknowledgments. So 
fierce, indeed, and contumelious and withering 
is his invective, as to suggest the theory, that, 
in her successive transmigrations, the same 
fiery soul which in one age breathed the “ Di¬ 
vine Philippics,” and in another, the “ Letters 
on a Regicide Peace,” was lodged in the six¬ 
teenth century under the cowl of an August- 
inian monk; retaining her indomitable energy 
of abuse, though condemned.to a temporary di¬ 
vorce from her inspiring genius. Yet what 
she lost in eloquence in her transit from the 
Roman to the Irishman, this upbraiding spirit 
more than retrieved in generous and philan¬ 
thropic ardour, while she dwelt in the bosom 
of the Saxon. Luther’s rage, for it is nothing 
less—his scurrilities, for they are no better— 
are at least the genuine language of passion, 
excited by a deep abhorrence of imposture, 
tyranny, and wrong. Through the ebullitions 
of his wrath may be discovered his lofty self¬ 
esteem, but not a single movement of puerile 
vanity; his cordial scorn for fools and their 
folly, but not one heartless sarcasm; his burn¬ 
ing indignation against oppressors, whether 
spiritual or secular, unclouded by so much as 
a passing shade of malignity. The torrent of 
emotion is headlong, but never turbulent. 
When we are least able to sympathize with his 
irascible feelings, it is also least in our power 
to refuse our admiration to a mind which, 
when thus torn up to its lowest depths, discloses 
no trace of envy, selfishness, or revenge, or of 
any still baser inmate. His mission from on 
high may be disputed, but hardly his own be¬ 
lief in it. In that persuasion, his thoughts 
often reverted to the prophet of Israel mocking 
the idolatrous priests of Baal, and menacing 
their still more guilty king; and if the mantle 
of Elijah might have been borne with a more 
imposing majesty, it could not have fallen on 
one better prepared to pour contempt on the 
proudest enemies of truth, or to brave their ut¬ 
most resentment. 

Is it paradoxical to ascribe Luther’s boiste¬ 
rous invective to his inherent reverence for 



LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION. 


47 


all those persons and institutions, in favour of 
which wisdom, power, and rightful dominion, 
are involuntarily presumed] ^He lived under 
the control of an imagination susceptible 
though not creative—of that passive mental 
sense to which it belongs to embrace, rather 
than to orig’.r.ate—to fix and deepen our more 
serious impressions, rather than to minister to 
the understanding in the search or the embel¬ 
lishment of truth. This propensity, the basis 
of religion itself in some, of loyalty in others, 
and of superstition perhaps in all, prepares 
the feeble for a willing servitude; and fur¬ 
nishes despotism with zealous instruments in 
men of stronger nerves and stouter hearts. It 
steeled Dominic and Loyola for their relent¬ 
less tasks, and might have raised St. Martin 
of Wittemburg to the honours of canonization; 
if, in designing him for his arduous office, Pro¬ 
vidence had not controlled the undue sensi¬ 
bility of Luther’s mind, by imparting to him a 
brother’s love for all the humbler members of 
the family of man, and a filial fear of God, 
stronger even than his reverence for the powers 
and principalities of this sublunary world. Be¬ 
tween his religious affections and his homage 
for the idols of his imagination, he was agi¬ 
tated by a ceaseless conflict. The nice adjust¬ 
ment of such a balance ill suited his impatient 
and irritable temper; and he assaulted the 
objects of his early respect with an impetuosity 
which betrays his secret dread of those formi¬ 
dable antagonists (so he esteemed them) of 
God and of mankind. He could not trust him¬ 
self to be moderate. The restraints of educa¬ 
tion, habit, and natural disposition, could be 
overborne only by the excitement which he 
courted and indulged. His long-cherished 
veneration for those who tread upon the high 
places of the earth, lent to his warfare with 
them all the energy of self-denial, quickened 
by the anxiety of self-distrust! He scourged 
his lordly adversaries, in the spirit of a flagel¬ 
lant taming his own rebellious flesh. His 
youthful devotion for “ the solemn plausibili¬ 
ties of life,” like all other affections obstinately 
repelled and mortified, reversed its original 
tendency, and gave redoubled fervour to the 
zeal with which he denounced their vanity 
and resisted their usurpation. If these indig¬ 
nant contumelies offended the gentle, the 
learned, and the wise, they sustained the cou¬ 
rage and won the confidence of the multitude. 
The voice which commands in a tempest must 
battle with the roar of the elements. In his 
own apprehension at least, Luther’s soul was 
among lions—the princes of Germany, and 
their ministers; Henry the Eighth, and Edward 
Lee, his chaplain; the sacramentarians and 
I Andoaptists; the Universities of Cologne and 
Louvain; Charles and Leo; Adrian and Cle¬ 
ment ; Papists, Jurists, and Aristotelians; and, 
above all, the devils whom his creed assigned 
j to each of these formidable opponents as so 
many inspiring or ministering spirits. How¬ 
ever fierce and indefensible may be his occa¬ 
sional style, history presents no more sublime 
picture than that of the humble monk triumph¬ 
ing over such adversaries, in the invincible 
power of a faith before which the present and 
! the visible disappeared, to make way for things 


unseen, eternal, and remote. One brave spirit 
encountered and subdued a hostile world. An 
intellect of no gigantic proportions, seconded 
by learning of no marvellous compass, and 
gifted with no rare or exquisite abilities, but 
invincible in decision and constancy of pur¬ 
pose, advanced to the accomplishment of one 
great design, with a continually increasing 
momentum , before which all feebler minds 
retired, and all opposition was dissipated. The 
majesty of the contest, and the splendour of 
the results, may, perhaps, even in our fasti¬ 
dious and delicate age be received as an apo¬ 
logy for such reproofs as the following to the 
.royal “ Defender of the Faith.” 

“ There is much royal ignorance in this vo¬ 
lume, but there is also much virulence and 
falsehood, which belongs to Lee the editor. 
In the cause of Christ I have trampled under 
foot the idol of the Roman abomination which 
had usurped the place of God and the domi¬ 
nion of sovereigns and of the world. Who, 
then, is this Henry, this Thomist, this disciple 
of the monster, that I should dread his blas¬ 
phemies and his fury? Truly he is the de¬ 
fender of the Church! Yes, of that Church of 
his which he thus extols—of that prostitute 
who is clothed in purple, drunk with her de¬ 
baucheries—of that mother of fornications. 
Christ is my leader. I will strike with the 
same blow that Church and the defender with 
whom she has formed this strict union. They 
have challenged me to war Well, they shall 
have war. They have scorned the peace I 
offered them. Well, they shall have no more 
peace. It shall be seen which will first be 
weary—the pope or Luther.”—•“ The world is 
gone mad. There are the Hungarians, assum¬ 
ing the character of the defenders of God him¬ 
self. They pray in their litanies, ut nos defen- 
sores tuos exaudire digneris —why do not some of 
our princes take on them the protection of 
Jesus Christ, others that of the Holy Spirit ? 
Then, indeed, the Divine Trinity would be well 
guarded.” 

The briefs of Pope Adrian are thus disposed 
of:—“It is mortifying to be obliged to give 
such good German in answer to this wretched 
Latin. But it is the pleasure of God to con¬ 
found antichrist in every thing—to leave him 
neither literature nor language. They say 
that he has gone mad and fallen into dotage. 
It is a shame to address us Germans in such 
Latin as this, and to send to sensible people 
such a clumsy and absurd interpretation of 
scripture.” 

The bulls of Pope Clement fare no bettei 
“ The pope tells us in his answer that he is 
willing to throw open the golden doors. It is 
long since we opened all doors in Germany. 
But these Italian scaramouches have never 
restored a farthing of the gain they have made 
by their indulgences, dispensations, and other 
diabolical inventions. Good Pope Clement, 
all your clemency and gentleness won’t pass 
here. We’ll buy no more indulgences. Golden 
doors and bulls, get ye home again. Look to 
the Italians for payment. They who know ye 
will buy ye no more. Thanks be to God, we 
know that they who possess and believe the 
gospel, enjoy an uninterrupted jubilee. Ev 


mwm m h UU IH 






43 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


cellent pope, what care we for your bulls? 
You may save your seals and your parchment. 
They are in bad odour now-a-days.”—“Let 
them accuse me of too much violence. . I care 
not. Hereafter be it my glory that men shall 
tell how I inveighed and raged against the 
papists. For the last ten years have I been 
humbling myself, and addressing them in none 
but respectful, language. What has been the 
consequence of all this submission? To make 
bad worse. These people are but the more 
furious. Well, since they are incorrigible, as 
it is vain to hope to shake their infernal pur¬ 
poses by kindness, I will break them, I will 
pursue them,” &c.—“ Such is my contempt for 
these satans, that were I not confined here, I 
would go straight to Rome, in spite of the 
devil and all these furies.” “ But,” he con¬ 
tinues, iu a more playful mood, “I must have 
patience with the pope, with my boarders, my 
servants, with Catherine de Bora, and with 
every body else. In short, I live a life of pa¬ 
tience.” 

At the risk of unduly multiplying these quo¬ 
tations, we must add another, which has been 
quoted triumphantly by his enemies. It is his 
answer to the charge of mistranslating the 
Bible. “The ears of the papists are too long 
with their hi! ha!—they are unable to criticise 
a translation from Latin into German. Tell 
them that Dr. Martin Luther chooses that it 
shall be so, and that a papist and a jackass are 
the same.” 

We should reprint no small portion of Lu¬ 
ther’s works before we exhausted the examples 
which might be drawn from them, of the uproar 
with which he assailed his antagonists. To 
the reproaches which this violence drew on 
him, he rarely condescended to reply. But to 
his best and most powerful friend, the Elector 
Frederic, he makes a defence, in which there 
is some truth and more eloquence. “They 
say that these books of mine are too keen and 
cutting. They are right: I never meant them 
to be soft and gentle. My only regret is, that 
they cut no deeper. Think of the violence 
of my enemies, and you must confess that I 
have been forbearing.”—“All the world ex¬ 
claims against me, vociferating the most hate¬ 
ful calumnies; and if in my turn, I, poor man, 
raise my voice, then nobody has been vehe¬ 
ment but Luther. In fine, whatever I do or 
say must be wrong, even should I raise the 
dead. Whatever they do must be.right, even 
should they deluge Germany with tears and 
blood.” In his more familiar discourse, he 
gave another, and perhaps a more accurate 
account of the real motives of his impetuosity. 
He purposely fanned the flame of an indigna¬ 
tion which he thought virtuous, because the 
origin of it was so. “ I never,” he said, “ write 
or speak so well as when I am in a passion.” 
He found anger an ineffectual, and at last a 
necessary stimulant, and indulged in a liberal 
or rather in an intemperate use of it. 

The tempestuous phase of Luther’s mind 
was not, however, permanent. The wane of 
it may be traced in his later writings; and the 
cause of it may be readily assigned. The 
liberator of the human mind was soon to dis¬ 
cover that the powers he had set free were not 


subject to his control. The Iconoclasts, Ana¬ 
baptists, and other innovators, however wel¬ 
come at first as useful, though irregular 
partisans, brought an early discredit on the 
victory to which they had contributed. The 
reformer’s suspicion of these doubtful allies 
was first awakened by the facility with which 
they urged their conquests over the established 
opinions of the Christian world beyond the 
limits at which he had himself paused. He 
distrusted their exemption from the pangs and 
throes with which the birth of his own doc¬ 
trines had been accompanied. He perceived 
in them none of the caution, self-distrust, and 
humility, which he wisely judged inseparable 
from the honest pursuit of truth. Their claims 
to an immediate intercourse with heaven ap¬ 
peared to him an impiou^ pretension ; for he 
judged that it is only as attempered through 
many a gross intervening medium, that divine 
light can be received into the human under¬ 
standing. Carlostadt, one of the professors of 
Wittemburg, was the leader of the Illuminati 
at that university. The influence of Luther 
procured his expulsion to Jena, where he 
established a printing press. But the maxim's 
of toleration are not taught in the school of 
successful polemics ; and the secular arm was 
invoked to silence an appeal to the world at 
large against a new papal authority. 

The debate from which Luther thus excluded 
others he could not deny to himself; for he 
shrunk from no inquiry and dreaded no man’s 
prowess. A controversial passage at arms ac¬ 
cordingly took place between the reformer and 
his refractory pupil. It is needless to add that 
they separated, each more firmly convinced of 
the errors of his opponent. The taunt of fear¬ 
ing an open encounter with truth, Luther re¬ 
pelled with indignation and spirit. He invited 
Carlostadt to publish freely whatever he thought 
fit, and the challenge being accepted, placed in 
his hands a florin, as a kind of wager of battle. 
It was received with equal frankness. The 
combatants grasped each other’s hands, drank 
mutual pledges in a sclemn^cup, and parted to 
engage in hostilities more serious than such 
greetings might have seemed to augur. Luther 
had the spirit of a martyr, and was not quite 
exempt from that of a persecutor. Driven 
from one city to another, Carlostadt at last 
found refuge at Basle; and thence assailed his 
adversary with a rapid succession of pamphlets, 
and with such pleasant appellatives as “ two¬ 
fold papist,” “ ally of antichrist,” and so forth. 
They were answered with equal fertility, and 
with no greater moderation. “The devil,” 
says Luther, “ held his tongue till I won him 
over with a florin. It was money well laid 
out. I do not regret it.” He- now advocated 
the cause of social order, and exposed the 
dangers of ignorant innovators, assailing these 
new enemies with his own weapons. “ It will 
never do to jest with Mr. All-the-World (Herr 
Omnes.) To keep that formidable person quiet, 
God has established lawful authority. It is his 
pleasure that there should be order amongst us 
here.” “ They cry out, the Bible ! the Bible !— 
Bibel! Bubel! Babel!” From that sacred 
source many arguments had been drawn to 
prove that all good Christians, were bound, in 




LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION. 


49 


imitation of the great Jewish lawgiver, to over¬ 
throw and deface the statues with which the 
papists had embellished the sacred edifices. 
Luther strenuously resisted both the opinion 
and the practice; maintaining that the Scrip¬ 
tures nowhere prohibit the use of images, ex¬ 
cept such as were designated as a representa¬ 
tion or symbol of Deity. But to the war with 
objects designed (however injudiciously) to 
aid the imagination, and to enliven the affec¬ 
tions, Carlostadl and his partisans united that 
mysticism which teaches that the mind, thus 
deprived of all external and sensible supports, 
should raise itself to a height of spiritual con¬ 
templation and repose, where, all other objects 
being banished, and all other sounds unheard, 
and all other thoughts expelled, the Divine 
Being will directly manifest himself, and dis¬ 
close his will by a voice silent and inarticulate, 
and yet distinctly intelligible. Luther handles 
ilhis sublime nonsense as it well deserved. 
'‘The devil,” he says, (for this is his universal 
solvent,) “ opens his large mouth, and roars 
out, Spirit! spirit! spirit! destroying the while 
.all roads, bridges, scaling-ladders, and paths, 
by which spirit can enter; namely, the visible 
order established by God in holy baptism, in 
outward forms, and in his own word. They 
would have you mount the clouds and ride the 
winds, telling you neither how, nor when, nor 
where, nor which. All this they leave you to 
discover for yourself.” 

Carlostadt was an image-breaker and a 
mystic, but he was something more. He had 
udopted the opinion of Zuingle and CEcolam- 
padius on the holy communion,—receiving as 
an emblem, and as nothing else, the sacred ele¬ 
ments in which the Roman Catholic Church, 
after the words of consecration, recognises 
the very body and blood of the Divine Redeemer. 
He was, therefore, supported by the whole body 
of Swiss reformers. Luther, “ chained down,” 
as he expresses it, “ by the sacred text,” to the 
doctrine of the real presence, had ardently de¬ 
sired to be enfranchised from this opinion. 
“ As often as he felt within himself the strivings 
of the old Adaifl, he was but too violently drawn 
to adopt the Swiss interpretation.” “ But if we 
take counsel with reason we shall no longer 
believe any mystery.” He had, however, con¬ 
sulted this dangerous guide too long, thus 
easily to shake off her company. The text 
taught him one real presence, his reason as¬ 
sured him of another; and so he required his 
disciples to admit and believe both. They 
obeyed, though at the expense of a schism 
among the reformers, of which it is difficult to 
say whether i{ occasioned more distress to 
themselves, or more exultation to their common 
enemies. 

This is the first and greatest of those “Varia¬ 
tions” of which the history has been written 
with such inimitable eloquence. Nothing short 
of the most obtuse prejudice could deny to 
Bossuet the praise of having brought to religious 
controversy every quality which can render it 
either formidable or attractive ; a style of such 
transparent perspicuity as would impart delight 
to the study of the year-books, if they could be 
rewritten in it; a sagacity which nothing es¬ 
capes ; and a fervour of thought and feeling so 


intense, as to breathe and burn not only without 
the use of vehement or opprobrious words, but 
through a diction invariably calm and simple; 
and amass of learning so vast and so perfectly 
digested as to be visible every where without 
producing the slightest encumbrance or em¬ 
barrassment. To quote from Mr. Hallam’s 
History of the Middle Ages :—“ Nothing, per¬ 
haps, in polemical eloquence is so splendid 
as the chapter on Luther’s theological tenets. 
The eagle of Meaux is there truly seen, lordly 
of form, fierce of eyes, terrible in his beak and 
claws”—a graphic and not unmerited tribute 
to the prowess of this formidable adversary. 
But the triumph which it appears to concede 
to him may not be so readily acknowledged. 

The argument of the “Variations” rests on 
the postulate, that a religion of divine origin 
must have provided some resource for exclud¬ 
ing uncertainty on every debatable point of be¬ 
lief or practice. But it must be vain to search 
for this steadfast light amongst those who were 
at variance on so many vital questions. The 
required Ductor Dubitantium could, therefore, 
be found only in the venerable form of the 
Catholic Church, whose oracles, every where 
accessible and never silent, had, from age to 
age, delivered to the faithful the same invari¬ 
able truths in one continuous strain of perfect 
and unbroken harmony. 

Much as the real contrast has been exagge¬ 
rated by the most subtle disputant of modern 
times, it would be futile to deny, or to extenuate 
tfie glaring inconsistencies of the reformers 
with each other, and with themselves. Protest¬ 
antism may well endure an avowal which 
leaves her foundations unimpaired. Bossuet 
has disproved the existence of a miracle which 
no man alleges. He has incontrovertibly es¬ 
tablished that the laws of nature were not sus¬ 
pended in favour of Luther and his associates. 
He has shown, with inimitable address and 
eloquence, that, within the precincts of moral 
science, human reason must toil in vain for 
demonstrative certainties; and that, in such 
studies, they who would adopt the same general 
results, and co-operate for one common end, 
must be content to rest very far short of an 
absolute identity of opinion. But there is a 
deep and impassable gulf between these pre¬ 
mises and the inference deduced from them. 
The stupendous miracle of a traditional una¬ 
nimity for fifteen hundred years amongst the 
members of the Christian Church, at once un¬ 
attested by any authentic evidence, and refuted 
by irresistible proofs, is opposed as much to 
the whole economy of the moral government 
of the world, as it is to human experience. It 
was, indeed, easy to silence dissent by terror; 
to disguise real differences beneath conven¬ 
tional symbols; to divert the attention of the 
incurious by a gorgeous pageantry; and to dis¬ 
arm the inquisitive at one time by golden pre¬ 
ferments, and at another by specious com¬ 
promises : and it was easy to allege this timid, 
or blind, or selfish acquiescence in spiritual 
despotism, as a general consent to the autho¬ 
rity, and as a spontaneous adoption of the 
tenets of the dominant priesthood. But so 
soon as men really begin to think, it was im 
possible that they should think alike. When 





50 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


suffrages were demanded, and not acclama¬ 
tions, there was at once an end of unanimity. 
With mental freedom came doubt, and debate, 
and sharp dissension. The indispensable con¬ 
ditions of human improvement were now to 
be fulfilled. It was discovered that religious 
knowledge, like all other knowledge, and reli¬ 
gious agreement, like all other agreement, 
were blessings -which, like all other blessings, 
must be purchased at a price. Luther dis¬ 
pelled the illusion that man’s noblest science 
maybe attained, his first interests secured, and 
his most sacred duties discharged, except in 
the strenuous exercise of the best faculties of 
his nature. He was early taught that they 
who submit themselves to this divine ordi¬ 
nance are cut off from the intellectual repose 
which rewards a prostrate submission to hu¬ 
man authority; that they must conduct the 
search of truth through many a bitter disap¬ 
pointment, and many a humiliating retraction, 
and many a weary strife ; and that they must 
brace their nerves and strain their mental 
powers to the task, with sleepless diligence,— 
attended and sustained the while by singleness 
of purpose, by candour, by hope, by humility, 
and by devotion. When this severe lesson 
had been learned, the reformers boldly, nay, 
passionately, avowed their mutual differences. 
The imperfect vision, and unsteady gait, of 
eyes long excluded from the light, and limbs 
debarred from exercise, drew on them the 
taunts and contumelies of those Avhose bondage 
they had dared to reject. But the sarcasms 
even of Erasmus, the eloquence even of 
Bossuet, were hurled at them in vain. Centu¬ 
ries rolled on their appointed course of con¬ 
troversy, of prejudice, of persecution, and of 
long suffering. Nor was that sharp conflict 
endured to no good end. Gradually the reli¬ 
gion of the gospel resumed much of the be¬ 
nignant and catholic spirit of the primitive 
ages. The rights of conscience and the prin¬ 
ciples of toleration, were acknowledged. Some 
vehement disputes were consigned to well- 
merited neglect. The Church of Rome her¬ 
self silently adopted much of the spirit, whilst 
anathematizing the tenets, of the reformers; 
and if the dominion of peace and charity be 
still imperfect and precarious, yet there is a 
brighter prospect of their universal empire 
than has ever before dawned on the nations of 
Christendom. The eagle of Meaux, had he 
been reserved for the nineteenth century, 
would have laid aside “ the terrors of his beak, 
the lightnings of his eye,” and would have 
winged his lordly flight to regions elevated far 
above those over which it is his glory to have 
spread war and consternation. 

These, however, are conclusions, which, in 
Luther’s age, were beyond the reach of human 
foresight. It w r as at that time supposed that 
all men might at once freely discuss, and una¬ 
nimously interpret, the meaning of the inspired 
volume. The trial of the experiment brought 
to light many essential variations, but still 
more in which the verbal exceeded the real 
difference; and such was, perhaps, the case 
with the sacramentarian controversy. The 
objection to Luther’s doctrine of consubstan- 
tiation, was not that it was opposed to the 


reason of man, nor even that it was contra¬ 
dicted by the evidence of his senses; but that 
no intelligible meaning could be assigned to 
any of the combinations of words in which it 
was expressed. It might be no difficult task 
to be persuaded that whatever so great a doc¬ 
tor taught, on so high a point of thcolog}'-, must 
be a truth;—just as the believers in George 
Psalmanazer may have been firmly assured 
of the verity of the statements he addressed to 
them in the language of Formosa. But the 
Lutheran doctrine could hardly have been 
more obscure, if delivered in the Formosan, 
instead of the Latin or the German tongue. 
To all common apprehension, it appeared no¬ 
thing less than the simultaneous affirmation 
and denial of the very same thing. In this 
respect, it closely resembled the kindred doc¬ 
trine of the Church of Rome. Yet who would 
dare to avow such presumptuous bigotry as 
to impute to the long unbroken succession of 
powerful and astute minds which have adorned 
the Roman Catholic and Lutheran churches, 
the extravagance of having substituted un¬ 
meaning sounds for a definite sense, on so 
momentous an article of their respective 
creeds 1 The consequence may be avoided 
by a much more rational supposition. It is, 
that the learned of both communions used the 
words in which that article is enounced, in a 
sense widely remote from that which they 
usually bear. The proof of this hypothesis 
would be more easy than attractive ; nor would 
it be a difficult, though an equally uninviting 
office, to show that Zuingle and his followers 
indulged themselves in a corresponding free¬ 
dom with human language. The dispute, how¬ 
ever, proceeded too rapidly to be overtaken or 
arrested by definitions; which, had they pre¬ 
ceded, instead of following the controversy, 
might have stifled in its birth many a goodly 
folio. 

The minds of men are rudely called away 
from these subtleties. Throughout the west 
of Germany, the peasants rose in a sudden 
and desperate revolt against their lords, under 
the guidance of Goetz of the “Iron Hand.” If 
neither animated by the principles, nor guided 
by the precepts, of the gospel, the insurgents 
at least avowed their adherence to the party 
then called Evangelical, and justified their 
conduct by an appeal to the doctrines of the 
reformers. Yet this fearful disruption of the 
bands of society was provoked neither by spe¬ 
culative opinions, nor by imaginary wrongs. 
The grievances of the people were galling, 
palpable, and severe. They belonged to that 
class of social evils over which the advancing 
light of truth and knowledge must always tri¬ 
umph ; either by prompting timely conces¬ 
sions, or by provoking the rebound of the 
overstrained patience of mankind. Domestic 
slavery, feudal tenures, oppressive taxation, 
and a systematic denial of justice to the poor, 
occupied the first place in their catalogue of 
injuries: the forest laws and the exaction of 
small tithes the second. The demand of the 
right to choose their own religious teachers, 
may not improbably have been added, to give 
to their cause the semblance of a less sublu¬ 
nary character; and rather in compliment to 



51 


LUTHER AND TI 

the spirit of the times, than from any very 
lively desire for instructers, who, they well 
knew, would discourage and rebuke their law¬ 
less violence. Such a monitor was Luther. 
He was at once too conspicuous and too ar¬ 
dent to remain a passive spectator of these 
tumults. The nobles arraigned him as the 
author of their calamities. The people in¬ 
voked him as an arbiter in the dispute. He 
answered their appeal with more than papal 
dignity. A poor untitled priest asserted over 
the national mind of Germany, a command 
more absolute than that of her thousand princes 
and their imperial head. He had little of the 
science of government, nor, in truth, of any 
other science. But his mind had been expanded 
by his studies which give wisdom even to the 
simple. His understanding was invigorated 
by habitual converse with the inspired writings, 
and his soul drank deeply of their spirit. And 
therefore it was, that from him Europe first 
heard those great social maxims which, though 
they now pass for elementary truths, were 
then as strange in theory as they were unknown 
in practice. He fearlessly maintained that the 
demands of the insurgents were just. He 
asserted the all important, though obvious 
truth, that power is confided to the rulers of 
mankind not to gratify their caprice or selfish¬ 
ness, but as a sacred trust to be employed for 
the common good of society at large; and he 
denounced their injustice and rapacity with 
the same stern vehemence which he had for¬ 
merly directed against the spiritual tyrants of 
the world. For, in common with all who have 
caught the genius as well as the creed of 
Christianity, his readiest sympathies were 
with the poor, the destitute, and the oppressed; 
and, in contemplating the unequal distribution 
of the good things of life, he was not slowly 
roused to a generous indignation against those 
to whom the advantages of fortune had taught 
neither pity nor forbearance. But it was an 
emotion restrained and directed by far deeper 
thoughts than visit the minds of sentimental 
patriots, or selfish demagogues. He depicted, 
in his own ardent and homely phrase, the 
guilt, the folly, and the miseries of civil war. 
He reminded the people of their ignorance 
and their faults. He bade them not to divert 
their attention from these, to scan the errors 
of their superiors. He drew from the evange¬ 
lical precepts of patience, meekness, and long- 
suffering, every motive which could calm 
their agitated passions. He implored them 
not to dishonour the religion they professed; 
and showed that subordination in human so¬ 
ciety was a divine ordinance, designed to 
promote, in different ways, the moral improve¬ 
ment of every rank, and the general happiness 
of all. 

The authority, the courage, and the pathetic 
earnestness of the great reformer were exerted 
in vain. Oppression, which drives wise men 
mad, had closed the ears of the German pea¬ 
santry to the advice even of Martin Luther; 
and they plunged into a contest more despe¬ 
rate in its character, and more fatal in its 
results, than any which stains the annals of 
the empire. He felt, with the utmost keen¬ 
ness, the reproach thus brought unto the Refor- 


E REFORMATION. 

mation; nor may it be concealed, that at last 
his voice was raised in terrible indignation 
against the insurgents by whom his pacific 
efforts had been defeated and his remonstrances 
despised. His old antagonist, Carlostadt, was 
charged with a guilty participation in the re¬ 
volt ; and in his distress appealed to the much- 
reviled consubstantialist for protection. It was 
hardly in human nature, certainly not in Lu¬ 
ther’s, to reject such a supplicant. The odium 
theologicum is, after all, rather a vituperative 
than a malignant affection, even its worst type; 
and Luther possessed, more than most pole¬ 
mics, the faculty of exorcising the demon of 
wrath ’ through the channel of the pen. He 
placed Carlostadt in safety, defended him from 
the charge of fostering rebellion, and demanded 
for him a fair trial and a patient hearing. His 
preternatural fate has been already noticed. 

But a more formidable enemy was at hand. 
The supremacy of Erasmus in the world of 
letters was such as no other writer ever lived 
to enjoy. Literature had then a universal lan¬ 
guage, and the learned of all nations acknow¬ 
ledged him as their guide and model. In an 
age of intense mental activity, no other mind 
was so impatient of repose; at a period when 
freedom of thought was asserted with all the 
enthusiasm of new-born hope, he emulated 
the most sanguine of the insurgents against 
the ancient dynasties. The restorer, almost 
the inventor, of the popular interpretation of 
the Scriptures, he was excelled by few, if any, 
in the more ambitious science of biblical criti¬ 
cism. His philosophy (if in deference to cus¬ 
tom it must so be called) was but the applica¬ 
tion to those inquiries in which the present 
and future welfare of mankind is chiefly in¬ 
volved, of an admirable good sense—pene¬ 
trating sophisms under the most specious dis¬ 
guise, and repelling mere verbal subtleties, 
however imposing their pretensions, or how¬ 
ever illustrious their patrons. Alternately a 
man of the world, and a recluse scholar, he 
was ever wide awake to the real business of 
life; even in those studies which usually con¬ 
duct the mere prisoners of the cloister into 
dreamy and transcendental speculations. In 
his hands, the Latin language was bent to 
uses of which Cicero himself might have 
thought it incapable; and without any barba¬ 
rous innovations, became, almost for the first 
time, the vehicle of playful banter, and of high 
and mysterious doctrines, treated in a familiar 
and easy tone. Of the two imperial virtues, 
industry and self-denial, the literary character 
of Erasmus was adorned by the first, much 
more than by the second. Grasping at uni¬ 
versal excellence and immediate renown, he 
poured out orations, verses, essays, dialogues, 
aphorisms, biographies, translations, and new 
editions of the classical writers, with a rapidity 
which at once dazzled the world, and exhausted 
himself. Deeply as the impress of his mind 
was fastened on his own generation, those 
only of his countless works retain their charm 
in later times, which he regarded but as the 
pastime of a few leisure hours. Every one 
has read the “ Colloquies,” and admired their 
gay and graceful exposure of the frauds and 
credulity of his age. The •• Praise of Folly” 





52 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


should never be separated from Holbein’s 
etchings, without which the reader may now 
and then smile, but hardly laugh. The “ Cice¬ 
ronian s” is one of those elaborate pleasantries 
which give pleasure only to the laborious. 
For neither as a wit nor as a theologian, nor 
perhaps even as a critic, does Erasmus rank 
among master intellects; and in the other de¬ 
partments of literature no one has ventured to 
claim for him a very elevated station. His 
real glory is to have opened at once new chan¬ 
nels of popular and of abstruse knowledge— 
to have guided the few, while he instructed 
the many—to have lived and written for noble 
ends—to have been surpassed by none in the 
compass of his learning, or the collective value 
of his works—and to have prepared the way 
for a mighty revolution, which it required 
moral qualities far loftier than his to accom¬ 
plish. For the soul of this great man did not 
partake of the energy of his intellectual facul¬ 
ties. He repeatedly confesses that he had 
none of the spirit of a martyr; and the ac¬ 
knowledgment is made in the tone of sarcasm, 
rather than in that of regret. He belonged to 
that class of actors on the scene of life, who 
have always appeared as the harbingers of 
great social changes;—men gifted with the 
power to discern, and the hardihood to pro¬ 
claim, truths of which they want the courage 
to encounter the infallible results; who outrun 
their generation in thought, but lag behind it 
in action; players at the sport of reform so 
long as reform itself appears at an indefinite 
distance; more ostentatious of their mental 
superiority, than anxious for the well-being of 
mankind ; dreaming that the dark page of his¬ 
tory may hereafter become a fairy tale, in 
which enchantment will bring to pass a glo¬ 
rious catastrophe, unbought by intervening- 
strife, and agony, and suffering; and therefore 
overwhelmed with alarm when the edifice 
begins to totter, of which their own hands 
have sapped the foundation. He was a re¬ 
former until the Reformation became a fearful 
reality; a jester at the bulwarks of the papacy 
until they began to give way; a propagator of 
the Scriptures, until men betook themselves to 
the study and the application of them ; depre¬ 
ciating the mere outward forms of religion, 
until they had come to be estimated at their 
real value; in short, a learned, ingenious, 
benevolent, amiable, timid, irresolute man, 
who, bearing the responsibility, resigned to 
others the glory of rescuing the human mind 
from the bondage of a thousand years. The 
distance between his career and that of Lu¬ 
ther was, therefore, continually enlarging, until 
they at length moved in opposite directions, 
and met each other with mutual animosity. 
The reformer foresaw and deprecated this 
collision; and Bossuet has condemned as ser¬ 
vile the celebrated letter in which Luther en¬ 
deavoured to avert the impending contest. In 
common with many of his censures of the 
great father of the protestant churches, this is 
evidently the result of prejudice. It was con¬ 
ceived with tenderness, and expressed with 
becoming dignity. 

“ I do not,” he says, “ reproach you in your 
estrangements from us, fearing lest I should 


hinder the cause which you maintain against 
our common enemies the papists. For the 
same reason, it gives me no displeasure that, 
in many of your works, you have sought to ob¬ 
tain their favour, or to appease their hostility, 
by assailing us with undeserved reproaches 
and sarcasms. It is obvious that God has not 
given you the energy or the courage requisite 
for an open and fearless attack on these mon¬ 
sters, nor am I of a temper to exact from you 
what is beyond your strength.”—“ I have re¬ 
spected your infirmity, and that measure of the 
gifts of God which is in you. None can deny 
that you have promoted the cause of literature, 
thus opening the way to the right understand¬ 
ing of the Scriptures; or that the endowment 
which you have thus received from God is 
magnificent and worthy of all admiration. 
Here is a just cause for gratitude. I have 
never desired that you should quit your cau¬ 
tious and measured course to enter our camp. 
Great are the services you render by your 
genius and eloquence ; and as your heart fails 
you, it is best that you should serve God with 
such powers as He has given you. My only 
apprehension is, lest you should permit your¬ 
self to be dragged by our enemies to publish 
an attack upon our doctrines, for then I should 
be compelled to resist you to the face.”— 
“ Things have now reached a point at which 
we should feel no anxiety for our cause, even 
though Erasmus himself should direct all his 
abilities against us. It is no wonder that our 
party should be impatient of your attacks. 
Human weakness is alarmed and oppressed by 
the weight of the name of Erasmus. Once to 
be lashed by Erasmus is a far different thing 
from being exposed to the assaults of all the 
papists put together.”—“I have written all this 
in proof of my candour, and because I desire 
that God may impart to you a spirit worthy of 
your name. If that spirit be withheld, at least 
let me implore you to remain a mere spectator 
of our tragedy. Do not join your forces to 
our enemies. Abstain from writing against 
me, and I will write nothing against you.” 

This lofty tone grated on the fastidious ear 
of the monarch of literature. He watched his 
opportunity, and inflicted a terrible revenge. 
To have attacked the doctrines of the Reforma¬ 
tion would have been to hazard an unanswer¬ 
able charge of inconsistency. But Luther, in 
exploring his path, had lost his way in the 
labyrinth of the question of free will; and had 
published opinions which were nothing short 
of the avowal of absolute fatalism. In a treatise 
De Libero Arbitno , Erasmus made a brilliant 
charge on this exposed part of his adversary’s 
position: exhausting all the resources of his 
sagacity, wit, and learning, to lower the theo¬ 
logical character of the founder of the Lu¬ 
theran Church. The reformer staggered be¬ 
neath this blow. For metaphysical debate he 
was ill prepared—to the learning of his anta¬ 
gonist he had no pretension—and to his wit 
could oppose nothing but indignant vehemence. 
His answer, De Servo Arbitrio, has been con¬ 
fessed by his most ardent admirers, to have 
been but a feeble defence to his formidable 
enemy. The temper in which he conducted 
the dispute may be judged from the following 



LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION. 


53 


example:—“Erasmus, that king of amphibo¬ 
logy, reposes calmly on his amphibological 
throne, cheats us with his ambiguous language, 
and claps his hands when he finds us entangled 
amongst his insidious tropes, like beasts of 
chase fallen into the toils. Then seizing the 
occasion for his rhetoric, he springs on his 
captive with loud cries, tearing, scourging, 
tormenting, and devoting him to the infernals, 
because, as it pleases him to say, his words 
have been understood in a calumnious, scandal¬ 
ous and Satanic sense, though it was his own 
design that they should be so taken. See him 
come on creeping like a viper.” &c., &c. 

To the last, the sense of this defeat would 
appear to have clung to Luther. Accustomed 
to triumph in theological debate, he had been 
overthrown in the presence of abashed friends 
and exulting enemies; and the record of his 
familiar conversation bears deep traces of his 
keen remembrance of this humiliation. Many 
of the contumelious words ascribed to him on 
this subject, if they really fell from his lips, 
were probably some of those careless expres¬ 
sions in which most men indulge in the confi¬ 
dence of private life ; and which, when quoted 
with the utmost literal exactness, assume, in 
books published for the perusal of the world at 
large, a new meaning and an undesigned em¬ 
phasis. But there is little difficulty in receiv¬ 
ing as authentic the words he is said to have 
pronounced when gazing at the picture of 
Erasmus—that it was, like himself, full of craft 
and malice; a comment on the countenance 
of that illustrious scholar, as depicted by Hol- 
bien, from which it is impossible altogether to 
dissent. 

The contests with Erasmus and the sacra- 
mentarians had taken place in that debatable 
land which religion and philosophy each claims 
for her own. But Luther was now to oppose 
a revolt not merely against philosophy and 
religion, but against decency and common 
sense. Equally astounding and scandalous 
were the antics which the minds of men per¬ 
formed when, exempt from the control of their 
ancient prepossessions, they had not as yet 
been brought into subjection to any other. 
Throughout the north of Germany and the 
Netherlands, there were found many converts 
to the belief, that a divorce might be effected 
between the virtues which the gospel exacts, 
and those new relations between man and the 
Author of his being, which it at once creates 
and reveals; that, in short, it was possible to 
be at the same time a Christian and a knave. 
The connexion between this sottish delirium, 
and the rejection of infant baptism, was an ac¬ 
cident, or at most a caprice; and the name of 
Anabaptist, afterwards borne by so many wise 
and good men, is unfortunately, though indeli¬ 
bly associated with the crazy rabble who first 
assumed or received it at Munster. Herman 
Shaproeda, and after him Rothmann, were the 
first who instructed the inhabitants of that city 
in these ill-omened novelties ; and they quickly 
gained the authority which any bold and un¬ 
scrupulous guide may command in times when 
hereditary creeds have been abandoned by 
those who want the capacity or the knowledge 
to shape out new opinions for themselves. He 


who has not received adult baptism is not a 
Christian, he who is not a Christian is a pagan; 
and it is the duty of the faithful to oppose the 
enemies of truth by all arms, spiritual or secu¬ 
lar, within their reach. Strong in this reason¬ 
ing, and stronger still in numbers and in zeal, 
the Anabaptists declared open war, expelled 
the Catholics and Lutherans from the city, 
pillaged the churches and convents, and 
adopted as their watchword the exhortation to 
repent, with which the Baptist of old had ad¬ 
dressed the multitudes who surrounded him in 
the wilderness of Judea. If the insurgents did 
no works meet for repentance, they did many 
to be bitterly repented of. Their success was 
accompanied by cruelty, and followed by still 
fouler crimes. John de Mattheison, their chief 
prophet, established a community of goods, 
and committed to the flames every book except 
the Bible. John of Leyden, his successor, was 
a journeyman tailor, and, though at once a 
rogue and a fanatic, was not without some 
qualities which might have adorned a better 
cause. He conducted the defence of the city 
against the bishop with as much skill and 
gallantry as if his accustomed seat had been, 
not the shopboard, but the saddle of a belted 
knight. In the Scriptures, which his predeces¬ 
sor had exempted from the general conflagra¬ 
tion, he found a sanction for the plurality of 
wives, and proofs that the sceptre of David had 
passed into his own hands. Twelve princes, 
representing the heads of the tribes of Israel, 
received from him authority to ascend the 
thrones of Europe ; and apostles were sent to 
the great cities of Germany to propagate the 
new faith, and to attest the miracles of which 
they had been the witnesses. The doctrine 
they taught was less abstruse than might have 
been anticipated. It consisted in these propo¬ 
sitions :—There have been four prophets: the 
true are King David and John of Leyden; the 
false are the pope and Martin Luther: but Luther 
is worse than the pope. While this pithy creed 
was inculcated without the walls, the most 
frightful debaucheries, and a strange burlesque 
on royalty, went on within. The king paraded 
the city, attended by his queen, and followed 
by a long train of led horses caparisoned in 
gold brocade, a drawn sword being borne at 
his left hand, and a crown and Bible at his 
right. Seated on a throne in the public square, 
he received petitions from supplicants pros¬ 
trate on the earth before him. Then followed 
impious parodies on the most sacred offices of 
the Christian worship, and scenes of profligacy 
which may not be described. To these, ere 
long, succeeded horrors which rendered the 
New Jerusalem no inapt antitype of the old. 
The conquered king expiated his crimes on the 
scaffold,—enduring protracted and inhuman 
torments with a firmness which redeems ,his 
character from the abhorrence to which it had 
so many indisputable titles. Yet the story is 
not without interest. The rapidity with which 
the contagion of such stupid extravagances 
was propagated, and the apparent genuineness 
of the belief which a man of much fortitude 
and some acuteness at length yielded to the 
coinage of his own brain, however frequent, 
are still curious phenomena in the science j»f 
e2 



54 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


mental nosology. From his answers to the 
interrogatories which attended his trial, it may¬ 
be inferred that he was perfectly sane. His 
mind had been bewildered, partly by a de¬ 
praved imagination and ungoverned appetites, 
and partly by his encounter with questions too 
large for his capacity, and with detached sen¬ 
tences from Holy Writ, of which he perceived 
neither the obvious sense nor the more sublime 
intimations. The memory of this guilty, pre¬ 
sumptuous and unhappy man, is rescued from 
oblivion by the audacity of his enterprise, and 
still more by the influence it exerted in arrest¬ 
ing the progress of the Reformation. 

The reproach, however unmerited, fell hea¬ 
vily on Luther. It is the common fate of all 
who dare to become leaders in the war against 
abuses, whether in religious or political so¬ 
ciety, to be confounded with the baser sort of 
innovators, who at once hate their persons, 
and exaggerate and caricature the principles 
on which they have acted. For this penalty 
of rendering eminent services to the world 
every wise man is prepared, and every brave 
man endures it firmly, in the belief that a day 
is coming when his fame will be no longer 
oppressed by this unworthy association. Lu¬ 
ther’s faith in the ultimate deliverance of his 
good name frcfm the obloquy cast on it by the 
madness of the Anabaptists, has but imper¬ 
fectly been justified by the event. Long after 
his name belonged to the brightest page of 
human history, it found in Bossuet an antago¬ 
nist as inveterate, as Tetzel, more learned than 
Cajetan, and surpassing Erasmus himself in 
eloquence and ingenuity. Later still has 
arisen, in the person of Mr. Hallam, a censor, 
whose religious opinions, unquestionable in¬ 
tegrity, boundless knowledge, and admirable 
genius, give a fearful weight to his unfavour¬ 
able judgment of the Father of the Reforma¬ 
tion. Neither of these great writers, indeed, 
countenance the vulgar calumny which would 
identify the principles of Martin Luther with 
those of John of Leyden, although both of 
them arraign him in nearly the same terms, 
as having adopted and taught the antinomian 
doctrines, of which the Anabaptists exhibited 
the practical results. 

The course we are shaping having brought 
us within reach of the whirlpools of this inter¬ 
minable controversy, roaring in endless cir¬ 
cles over a dark and bottomless abyss, we 
cannot altogether yield to that natural impulse 
which would pass them by in cautious silence 
and with averted eyes. The Labarum of Lu¬ 
ther was a banner inscribed with the legend 
“Justification by Faith”—the compendium, the 
essence, the Alpha and the Omega of his dis¬ 
tinctive creed. Of the many, received or pos¬ 
sible interpretations of this enigmatical sym¬ 
bol, that which Bossuet and Mr. Hallam regard 
as most accordant with the views of the great 
standard-bearer himself, may be stated in the 
following terms:—If a man be firmly assured 
that his sins have been remitted by God, in the 
exercise of a mercy gratuitous and unmerited 
as it respects the offender himself, but accorded 
as the merited reward of the great propitiation, 
that man stands within the line which, even 
in this life, separates the objects of the Divine 


favour from the objects of the Divine displea¬ 
sure. We believe this epitome of the Luther¬ 
an doctrine to be inaccurate, and, but for the 
greatness of the names by which it is sanc¬ 
tioned, we should have ventured to add, super¬ 
ficial. In hazarding a different translation of 
Luther’s meaning into the language of the 
world we live in, we do but oppose one asser¬ 
tion to another, leaving the whole weight of 
authority on the unfavourable side. The ap¬ 
peal ultimately lies to those whose studies 
have rendered them familiar with the re¬ 
former’s writings, and especially with his 
“ Commentary on the Epistle to the Galatians,” 
which he was wont affectionately to call his 
Catherine de Bora. It must be conceded that 
they abound in expressions which, detached 
from the mass, would more than justify the 
censure of the historian of the “Literature of 
the Middle Ages.” But no writer would be 
less fairly judged than Luther by isolated pas¬ 
sages. Too impetuous to pause for exact dis¬ 
crimination, too long entangled in scholastic 
learning to have ever entirely recovered the 
natural relish for plain common sense, and 
compelled habitually to move in that turbid 
polemical region which pure and unrefracted 
light, never visits, Luther, it must be confessed, 
is intelligible only to the imparijal and labo¬ 
rious, and might also be supposed to have 
courted the reproaches which he least de¬ 
serves. Stripped of the technicalities of divi¬ 
nity and of the schools, his Articulus slant is 
aut cadentis ecclesisc may, perhaps, with no 
material error be thus explained. 

Define the word “conviction” as a delibe¬ 
rate assent to the truth of any statement, and 
the word “persuasion” as the habitual refer¬ 
ence to any such truth (real or supposed) as 
a rule of conduct; and it follows, that we are 
persuaded of many things of which we are 
not convinced: which is credulity or supersti¬ 
tion. Thus, Cicero was persuaded of the sanc¬ 
tity of the mysteries which he celebrated as 
one of the College of Augurs. But the author 
of the Treatise De Natura Dcorum had cer¬ 
tainly no corresponding convictions. We are 
convinced of much of which we are not per¬ 
suaded, which, in theological language, is a 
“dead faith.” The Marquis of Worcester de¬ 
liberately assented to the truth, that the expan¬ 
sive force of steam could be applied to propel 
a vessel through the water; but wanting the 
necessary “persuasion,” he left to others the 
praise of the discovery. Again, there are many 
propositions of which we are at once con¬ 
vinced and persuaded, and this in the Luther¬ 
an style is a “ living or saving faith.” In this 
sense Columbus believed the true configura¬ 
tion of the earth, and launched his caravels to 
make known the two hemispheres to each 
other. It is by the aid of successful experi¬ 
ment engendering confidence; of habit pro¬ 
ducing facility; and of earnest thoughts quick¬ 
ening the imagination and kindling desire, 
that our opinions thus ripen into motives, and 
our theoretical convictions into active persua¬ 
sion. It is, therefore, nothing else than a con¬ 
tradiction in terms to speak of Christian faith 
separable from moral virtue! The practical 
results of that as of any other motive, wil’ 





55 


LUTHER AND TI 

vary directly as the intensity of the impulse, 
and inversely as the number and force of the 
impediments ; but a motive which produces 
no motion, is the same thing as an attraction 
which does not draw, or as a propensity which 
does not incline. Far different as was the 
style in which Luther enounced his doctrine, 
the careful study of his writings will, we think, 
convince any dispassionate man that such 
was his real meaning. The faith of which he 
" rote was not a mere opinion, or a mere emo¬ 
tion. It was a mental energy, of slow but 
stately growth, of which an intellectual assent 
was the basis; high and holy tendencies the 
lofty superstructure; and a virtuous life the 
inevitable use and destination. In his own 
emphatic words:—“We do not say the sun 
ought to shine, a good tree ought to produce 
good fruit, seven and three ought to make ten. 
The sun shines by its own proper nature, 
without being bidden to do so; in. the same 
manner the good tree yields its good fruit; 
seven and three have made ten from everlast¬ 
ing—it is needless to require them to do so 
hereafter.” 

If any credit is due to his great antagonist, 
Luther’s doctrine of “ Justification” is not enti¬ 
tled to the praise or censure of novelty. Bos- 
suet resents this claim as injurious to the 
Church of Rome, and as founded on an extra¬ 
vagant misrepresentation of her real doctrines. 
To ascribe to the great and wise men of whom 
she justly boasts, or indeed to attribute to any 
one of sound mind, the dogma or the dream 
which would deliberately transfer the ideas of 
the market to the relations between man and 
his Creator, is nothing better than an ignorant 
and uncharitable bigotry. To maintain that, 
till Luther dispelled the illusion, the Christian 
world regarded the good actions of this life as 
investing even him who performs them best, 
with a right to demand from his Maker an 
eternity of uninterrupted and perfect bliss, is 
just as rational as to claim for him the detec¬ 
tion of the universal error which had assigned 
to the animal man a place among the quadru¬ 
peds. There is in every human mind a cer¬ 
tain portion of indestructible common sense. 
Small as this may be in most of us, it is yet 
enough to rescue us all, at least when sane 
and sober, from the stupidity of thinking not 
only that the relations of creditor and debtor 
can really subsist between ourselves and Him 
who made us, but that a return of such inesti¬ 
mable value can be due from Him for such 
ephemeral and imperfect services as ours. 
People may talk foolishly on these matters; 
but no one seriously believes this. Luther 
slew no such monster, for there were none 
such to be slain. The error which he refuted 
was far more subtle and refined than this, and 
is copiously explained by Hooker, to whose 
splendid sermon on the subject it is a “ good 
work” to refer any to whom it is unknown. 

The celebrated thesis of “Justification by 
Faith,” if really an Antinomian doctrine, was 
peculiar to Luther and to his followers only in 
so far as he extricated it from a mass of super¬ 
stitions by which it had been obscured, and 
assigned to it the prominence in his system to 
which it was justly entitled. But if his indig- 


E REFORMATION. 

nation had been roused against those who had 
darkened this great truth, they by whom it was 
made an apology for lewdness and rapine 
were the objects ot his scorn and abhorrence. 
His attack on the Anabaptists is conceived in 
terms so vigorous and so whimsical, that it is 
difficult to resist the temptation to exhibit 
some extracts. But who would needlessly 
disturb the mould beneath which lies interred 
and forgotten a mass of disgusting folly, which 
in a remote age exhaled a moral pestilence? 
Resolving all the sinister phenomena of life, 
by assuming the direct interference of the 
devil and his angels in the affairs of men, Lu¬ 
ther thought that this influence had been most 
unskilfully employed at Munster. It was a 
coup manque on the part of the great enemy of 
mankind. It showed that Satan was but a 
bungler at his art. The evil one had been 
betrayed into this gross mistake that the world 
might be on their guard against the more astute 
artifices to which he was about to resort: 

“These new theologians did not,” he said, 
“explain themselves very clearly.” “Having 
hot soup in his mouth, the devil was obliged 
to content himself with mumbling out mum, 
mum, wishing doubtless to say something 
worse.” “The spirit which would deceive 
the world must not begin by yielding to the 
fascinations of woman, by grasping the em¬ 
blems and honours of royalty, still less by 
cutting people’s throats. This is too broad; 
rapacity and oppression can deceive no one. 
The real deceit will be practised by him who 
shall dress himself in mean apparel, assume a 
lamentable countenance, hang down his head, 
refuse money, abstain from meat, fly from 
woman as so much poison, disclaim all tem¬ 
poral authority, and reject all honours as dam¬ 
nable; and who then, creeping softly towards 
the throne, the sceptre, and the keys, shall 
pick them up and possess himself of them by 
stealth. Such is the man who would succeed, 
who would deceive the angels, and the very 
elect. This would indeed be a splendid devil, 
with a plumage more gorgeous than the pea¬ 
cock or the pheasant. But thus impudently 
to seize the crown, to take not merely one 
wife, but as many as caprice or appetite sug¬ 
gests—oh! it is the conduct of a mere school¬ 
boy devil, of a devil at his ABC; or rather, 
it is the true Satan—Satan, the learned and the 
crafty, but fettered by the hands of God, with 
chains so heavy that he cannot move. It is to 
warn us, it is to teach us to fear his chastise¬ 
ments, before the field is thrown open to a 
more subtle devil, who will assail us no longer 
with the ABC, but with the real, the difficult 
text. If this mere deviling at his letters can 
do such things, what will he not do when he 
comes to act as a reasonable, knowing, skilful, 
lawyer-like, theological devil?” 

These various contests produced in the mind 
of Luther the effects which painful experience 
invariably yields, when the search for truth, 
prompted by the love of truth, has been long 
and earnestly maintained. Advancing years 
brought with them an increase of candour, 
moderation, and charity. He had lived to see 
his principles strike their roots deeply through 
a large part of the Christian world, and he 





56 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


anticipated, with perhaps too sanguine hopes, 
their universal triumph. His unshaken reli¬ 
ance in them was attested by his dying breath. 
But he had also lived to witness the defection 
of some of his allies, and the guilt and folly of 
others. Prolonged inquiry had disclosed to 
him many difficulties which had been over¬ 
looked in the first ardour of the dispute, and 
he had become painfully convinced that the 
establishment of truth is an enterprise incom¬ 
parably more arduous than the overthrow of 
error. His constitutional melancholy deep¬ 
ened into a more habitual sadness—his impe¬ 
tuosity gave way to a more serene and pensive 
temper—and as the tide of life ebbed with still 
increasing swiftness, he was chiefly engaged 
in meditating on those cardinal and undis¬ 
puted truths on which the weary mind may 
securely repose, and the troubled heart be 
still. The maturer thoughts of age could not, 
however, quell the rude vigour and fearless 
confidence, which had borne him through his 
early contests. With little remaining fond¬ 
ness or patience for abstruse speculations, he 
was challenged to debate one of the more 
subtle points of theology. His answer cannot 
be too deeply pondered by polemics at large. 
“ Should we not,” he said, “ get on better in 
this discussion with the assistance of a jug or 
two of beer 1” The offended disputant retired,— 
“ the devil,” observed Luther, “ being a haughty 
spirit, who can bear any thing better than being 
laughed at.” This growing contempt for un¬ 
profitable questions was indicated by a cor¬ 
responding decline in Luther’s original esti¬ 
mate of the importance of some of the minor 
topics in debate with the Church of Rome. He 
was willing to consign to silence the question 
of the veneration due to the saints. He sus¬ 
pended his judgment respecting prayers for 
the dead. He was ready to acquiesce in the 
practice of auricular confession, for the solace 
of those who regarded it as an essential reli¬ 
gious observance. He advised Spalatin to do 
whatever he thought best respecting the ele¬ 
vation of the host, deprecating only any posi¬ 
tive rule on the subject. He held the esta¬ 
blished ceremonies to be useful, from the 
impression they left on gross and uncultivated 
minds. He was tolerant of images in the 
churches, and censured the whole race of 
image-breakers with his accustomed vehe¬ 
mence. Even the use of the vernacular 
tongue in public worship, he considered as a 
convenient custom, not an indispensable rule. 
Carlostadt had insisted upon it as essential. 
“ Oh, this is an incorrigible spirit,” replied the 
more tolerant reformer; “ for ever and for ever 
positive obligations and sins !” 

But while his Catholic spirit thus raised him 
above the exaggerated estimate of those exter¬ 
nal things which chiefly attracted the hostility 
of narrower minds, his sense of the value of 
those great truths in which he judged the essence 
of religion to consist, was acquiring increased 
intensity and depth. In common with Mon¬ 
taigne and Richard Baxter, (names hardly to 
be associated on any other ground,) he con¬ 
sidered the Lord’s prayer as surpassing every 
other devotional exercise. “It is my prayer,” 
said Luther ; fi there is nothing like it.” In the 


same spirit, he preferred the gospel of St. John 
to all the other sacred books, as containing 
more of the language of Christ himself. As 
he felt, so he taught. He practised the most 
simple and elementary style of preaching. 
“If,” he said, “in my sermons I thought of 
Melancthon and other doctors, I should do no 
good; but I speak with perfect plainness for 
the ignorant, and that satisfies every body. 
Such Greek, Latin, and Hebrew as I have, I 
reserve for the learned.” “Nothing is more 
agreeable or useful for a common audience 
than to preach on the duties and examples of 
Scripture. Sermons on grace and justification 
fall coldly on their ears.” He taught that good 
and true theology consisted in the practice, the 
habit, and the life of the Christian graces— 
Christ being the foundation. “Such, however,” 
he says, “ is not our theology now-a-days. We 
have substituted for it a rational and specula¬ 
tive theology. This was not the case with 
David. He acknowledged his sins, and said, 
Miserere mei, Domine /” 

Luther’s power of composition is, indeed, 
held very cheap by a judge so competent as 
Mr. Hallam ; nor is it easy to commend his 
elaborate style. It was compared by himself 
to the earthquake and the wind which preceded 
the still small voice addressed to the prophet 
in the wilderness ; and is so turbulent, copious, 
and dogmatical, as to suggest the supposition 
that it was dictated to a class of submissive 
pupils, under the influence of extreme excite¬ 
ment. Obscure, redundant, and tautologous 
as these writings appear, they are still redeemed 
from neglect, not only by the mighty name of 
their author, but by that all-pervading vitality 
and downright earnestness which atone for the 
neglect of all the mere artifices of style; and 
by that profound familiarity with the sacred 
oracles, which far more than compensates for 
the absence of the speculative wisdom which 
is drawn from lower sources. But the reform¬ 
er’s lighter and more occasional works not un- 
frequently breathe the very soul of eloquence. 
His language in these, ranges .between collo¬ 
quial homeliness and the highest dignity,— 
now condensed into vivid figures, and then 
diffused into copious amplification,—exhibiting 
the successive phases of his ardent, melancholy, 
playful, and heroic character in such rapid 
succession, and with such perfect harmony, 
as to resemble the harp of Dryden’s Timotheus, 
alternately touched and swept by the hand of 
the master — a performance so bold and so 
varied, as to scare the critic from the discharge 
of his office. The address, for example, to the 
Swabian insurgents and nobles, if not executed 
with the skill, is at least conceived in the spirit 
of a great orator. The universal testimony of 
all the most competent judges, attests the ex¬ 
cellence of his translation of the Bible, and as¬ 
signs to him, in the literature of his country, a 
station corresponding to that of the great men 
to whom James committed the corresponding 
office in our own. 

Bayle has left to the friends of Luther no 
duty to perform in the defence of his moral 
character, but that of appealing to the un¬ 
answerable reply which his Dictionary contains 
to the charges preferred against the reformei 



LUTHER AND THE REFORMATION. 


&7 


by bis enemies. One unhappy exception is to 
be made. It is impossible to read without pain 
the names of Luther, Melancthon, and Bucerj 
amongst the subscribers to the address to the 
landgrave of Hesse, on the subject of his in¬ 
tended polygamy. Those great but fallible 
men remind his highness of the distinction be¬ 
tween universal laws and such as admit of 
dispensation in particular cases. They cannot 
publicly sanction polygamy. But his highness 
is of a peculiar constitution, and is exhorted 
seriously to examine all the considerations 
laid before him ; yet. if he is absolutely resolved 
to marry a second time, it is their opinion that 
he should do so as secretly as possible ! Fear¬ 
ful is the energy with which the “ Eagle of 
Meaux” pounces on this fatal error,—tearing 
to pieces the flimsy pretexts alleged in defence 
of such an evasion of the Christian code. The 
charge admits of no defence. To the inference 
drawn from it against the reformer’s doctrine, 
every Protestant has a conclusive answer. 
Whether in faith or practice, he acknowledges 
no infallible Head but one. 

But we have wandered far and wide from 
our proper subject. Where, all this while, is 
the story of Luther’s education, of his visit to 
Rome, of the sale of indulgences, of the de¬ 
nunciations of Tetzel, of the controversy with 
Eccius, the Diets of Worms and Augsburg, the 
citations before Cajetan and Charles, the papal 
excommunication, aud the appeal to a general 
council 1 These, and many other of the most 
momentous incidents of the reformer’s life, are 
recorded in M. D’Aubigne’s work, from which 
our attention has been diverted by matters of 
less account, but perhaps a little less familiar. 
It would be unpardonable to dismiss such a 
work, with a merely ceremonious notice. The 
absolute merit of this life of Martin Luther is 
great, but the comparative value far greater. 
In the English language, it has no competitor; 
and though Melancthon himself was the bio¬ 
grapher of his friend, we believe that no foreign 
tongue contains so complete and impressive a 
narrative of these events. It is true that M. 
D’Aubigne neither deserves nor claims a place 
amongst those historians, usually distinguished 
as philosophical. He does not aspire to illus¬ 
trate the principles which determine or per¬ 
vade the character, the policy, or the institutions 
of mankind. He arms himself with no dis¬ 
passionate skepticism, and scarcely affects to 
be impartial. To tell his tale copiously and 
clearly, is the one object of his literary ambi¬ 
tion. To exhibit the actors on the scene of 


life, as the free but unconscious agents o' the 
Divine Will, is the higher design with vhich 
he writes, to trace the mysterious inter ention 
of Providence in reforming the errr cs and 
abuses of the Christian Church is his imme¬ 
diate end; and to exalt the name of Lather, his 
labour of love. These purposes, as far a*i <Ley 
are attainable, are effectually attained. M. 
D’Aubigne is a Protestant of the original 
stamp, and a biographer of the old fashion ;— 
not a calm, candid, discriminating weigh jr and 
measurer of a great man’s parts, but a warm¬ 
hearted champion of his glory, and a resolute 
apologist even for his errors;—ready to do 
battle in his cause with all who shall impugn 
or derogate from his fame. His book is con¬ 
ceived in the spirit, and executed with all the 
vigour, of Dr. M’Crie’s “ Life of Knox.” He 
has all our lamented countryman’s sincerity, 
all his deep research, more skill in composition, 
and a greater mastery of subordinate detaiis; 
along with the same inestimable faculty of 
carrying on his story from one stage to another, 
with an interest which never subsides, and a 
vivacity which knows no intermission. If he 
displays no familiarity with the moral sciences, 
he is no mean proficient in that art which 
reaches to perfection only in the drama or the 
romance. This is not the talent of inventing, 
but the gift of discerning, incidents which im¬ 
part life and animation to narrative. For M. 
D’Aubigne is a writer of scrupulous veracity. 
He is at least an honest guide, though his pre¬ 
possessions may be too strong to render him 
worthy of implicit confidence. They are such, 
however, as to make him the uncompromising 
and devoted advocate of those cardinal tenets 
on which Luther erected the edifice of the Re¬ 
formation. To the one great at tide on which 
the reformer assailed the papacy, the eye of the 
biographer is directed with scarcely less in¬ 
tentness. To this every other truth is viewed 
as subordinate and secondary; and although, 
on this favourite point of doctrine M. D’Au¬ 
bigne’s meaning is too often obscured by de¬ 
claration, yet must he be hailed by every 
genuine friend of the Reformation, as having 
raised a powerful voice in favour of one of 
those fundamental truths which, so long as 
they are faithfully taught and diligently ob¬ 
served, will continue to form the great bul¬ 
warks of Christendom against the overweening 
estimate, and the despotic use, of human autho¬ 
rity, in opposition to the authority of the re¬ 
vealed will of God. 


8 






58 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


LIFE AND TIMES OF RICHARD BAXTER.* 

[Edinburgh Review, 1839.] 


This publication reminds us of an oversight 
in omitting to notice the collection of the 
works of Richard Baxter, edited in the year 
1830, by Mr. Orme. It was, in legal phrase, a 
demand for judgment, in the appeal of the 
great nonconformist to the ultimate tribunal 
of posterity, from the censures of his own age, 
on himself and his writings. We think that 
the decision was substantially right, and that, 
on the whole, it must be affirmed. Right it 
was, beyond all doubt, in so far as it assigned 
to him an elevated rank amongst those, who, 
taking the spiritual improvement of mankind 
for their province, have found there at once 
the motive and the reward for labours beneath 
which, unless sustained by that holy impulse, 
the utmost powers of our frail nature must 
have prematurely fainted. 

About the time when the high-born guests 
of Whitehall were celebrating the nuptial 
revels of Elizabeth and the Elector Palatine, 
and the visiters of low degree were defraying 
the cost by the purchase of titles and monopo¬ 
lies, there was living at the pleasant village 
of Eton Constantine, between Wrekin Hill 
and the Severn, a substantial yeoman, incu¬ 
rious alike about the politics of the empire 
and the wants of the exchequer. Yet was he 
not without his vexations. On the green be¬ 
fore his door, a Maypole, hung with garlands, 
allured the retiring congregation to dance out 
the Sunday afternoon to the sound of fife and 
tabret, while he, intent on the study of the 
sacred volume, was greeted with no better 
names than puritan, precisian, and hypocrite. 
If he bent his steps to the parish church, vene¬ 
rable as it was, and picturesque, in contempt 
of all styles and orders of architecture, his 
case was not much mended. The aged and 
purblind incumbent executed his weekly task 
with the aid of strange associates. One- of 
them laid aside the flail, and another the thim¬ 
ble, to mount the reading-desk. To these suc¬ 
ceeded “ the excellentest stage-player in all 
the country, and a good gamester, and a good 
fellow.” This worthy having received holy 
orders, forged the like for a neighbour’s son, 
who, on the strength of that title officiated in 
tlife pulpit and at the altar. Next in this goodly 
list came an attorney’s clerk, who had “tip¬ 
pled himself in so great poverty,” that he had 
no other way to live but by assuming the pas¬ 
toral care of the flock at Eton Constantine. 
Time out of mind, the curate had been ex 
officio the depositary of the secular, as well as 
of the sacred literature of the parish; and to 
these learned persons our yeoman was there¬ 
fore fain to commit the education of his only 
son and namesake, Richard Baxter. 


* The Practical Works of Richard Baxter, with a Pre¬ 
face, giving some Account of the Author, and of this 
edition of his Practical Works; and an Essay on his 
Genius, Works, and Times. 4 vols. 8vo. London, 1838. 


Such, from his tenth to his sixteenth year 
were the teachers of the most voluminous 
theological writer in the English language. 
Of that period of his life, the only incidents 
which can now be ascertained are that his 
love of apples was inordinate, and that on the 
subject of robbing orchards, he held, in practice 
at least, the doctrines handed down amongst 
schoolboys by an unbroken tradition. Almost 
as barren is the only extant record of the three 
remaining years of his pupilage. They were 
spent at the endowed school at Wroxeter, 
which he quitted at the age of nineteen, desti¬ 
tute of all mathematical and physical science— 
ignorant of Hebrew—a mere smatterer in 
Greek, and possessed of as much Latin as 
enabled him in after life to use it with reck¬ 
less facility. Yet a mind so prolific, and which 
yielded such early fruits, could not advance to 
manhood without much well-dressed culture. 
The Bible which lay on his father’s table, 
formed the whole of the good man’s library, 
and would have been ill-exchanged for the 
treasures of the Vatican. He had been no 
stranger to the cares, nor indeed to the disor¬ 
ders of life; and, as his strength declined, it 
was his delight to inculcate on his inquisitive 
boy the lessons which inspired wisdom teaches 
most persuasivety, when illustrated by dear- 
bought experience, and enforced by parental 
love. For the mental infirmities of the son no 
better discipline could have been found. A 
pyrrhonist of nature’s making, his threescore 
years and ten might have been exhausted in a 
fruitless struggle to adjudicate between anta¬ 
gonist theories, if his mind had not thus been 
subjugated to the supreme authority of Holy 
Writ, by an influence coeval with the first 
dawn of reason, and associated indissolubly 
with his earliest and most enduring affections. 
It is neither the wise nor the good by whom 
the patrimony of opinion is most lightly re¬ 
garded. Such is the condition of our exist¬ 
ence, that beyond the precincts of abstract 
science, we must take much for granted, if 
we would make any advance in knowledge, 
or live to any useful end. Our hereditary pre¬ 
possessions must not only precede our acquired 
judgments, but must conduct us to them. To 
begin by questioning every thing, is to end by 
answering nothing; and a premature revolt 
from human authority is but an incipient re¬ 
bellion against conscience, reason, and truth. 
Launched into the ocean of speculative in¬ 
quiry, without the anchorage of parental instruc¬ 
tion and filial reverence, Baxter would have 
been drawn by his constitutional tendencies 
into that skeptical philosophy, through the 
long annals of which no single name is to be 
found to which the gratitude of mankind has 
been yielded, or is justly due. He had much 
in common with the most eminent doctors of 
that school—the animal frame characterized 




LIFE AND TIMES OF RICHARD BAXTER 


59 


by sluggish appetites, languid passions, and 
great nervous energy; the intellectual nature 
distinguished by subtlety to seize distinctions 
more than by wit to detect analogies; by the 
power to dive, instead of the faculty to soar; 
by skill to analyze subjective truths, rather 
than by ability to combine them with each 
other and with objective realities. But what 
was wanting in his sensitive, and deficient in 
his intellectual structure, was balanced and 
corrected by the spiritual elevation of his 
mind. If not enamoured of the beautiful, nor 
conversant with the ideal, nor able to grasp 
the comprehensive and the abstract, he en¬ 
joyed that clear mental vision which attends 
on moral purity—the rectitude of judgment 
which rewards the subjection of the will to the 
reason—the loftiness of thought awakened by 
habitual communion with the source of light— 
and the earnest stability of purpose insepara¬ 
ble from the predominance of the social above 
the selfish affections. Skepticism and devo¬ 
tion were the conflicting elements of his inter¬ 
nal life; but the radiance from above gradually 
dispersed the vapours from beneath, and, 
through a half a century of pain and strife, 
and agitation, he enjoyed that settled tranquil¬ 
lity which no efforts merely intellectual can 
attain, nor any speculative doubts destroy,— 
the peace, of which it is said, that it passes 
understanding. 

Baxter was born in 1615, and consequently 
attained his early manhood amidst events 
ominous of approaching revolutions. Deep 
and latent as are the ultimate causes of the 
continued existence of Episcopacy in England, 
nothing can be less recondite than the human 
agency employed in working out that result. 
Nursed by the Tudors, adopted by the Stuarts, 
and wedded in her youth to a powerful aris¬ 
tocracy, the Anglican church retains the in¬ 
delible stamp of these early alliances. To the 
great, the learned, and the worldly wise, it has 
for three centuries afforded a resting-place and 
a refuge. But a long interval had elapsed be¬ 
fore the national temples and hierarchy were 
consecrated to the nobler end of enlightening 
the ignorant, and administering comfort to the 
poor. Rich beyond all Protestant rivalry in 
sacred literature, the Church of England, from 
the days of Parker to those of Laud, had 
scarcely produced any one considerable work 
of popular instruction. The pastoral care 
which Burnett depicted, in the reign of William 
and Mary, was at that time a vision which, 
though since nobly fulfilled, no past experience 
had realized. Till a much later time, the 
alphabet was among the mysteries which the 
English church concealed from her catechu¬ 
mens. There is no parallel in the annals of 
any other Protestant State, of so wonderful a 
concentration, and so imperfect a diffusion of 
learning and genius, of piety and zeal. The 
reigns of Whitgift, Bancroft, and Laud, were 
unmolested by cares so rude as those of evan¬ 
gelizing the artisans and peasantry. Jewel 
and Bull, Hall and Donne, Hooker and Taylor, 
lived and wrote for their peers, and for future 
ages, but not for the commonalty of their own. 
Yet was not Christianity bereft in England of 
her distinctive and glorious privilege. It was 


still the religion of the poor. Amidst persecu¬ 
tion, contempt, and penury, the Puritans had 
toiled and suffered, and had, not rarely, died in 
their service. Thus in every city, and almost 
in every village, they who had eyes to see, and 
ears to hear, might, at the commencement of 
the seventeenth century, perceive the harbin¬ 
gers of the coming tempest. Thoughtful and 
resolute men had transferred the allegiance of 
the heart from their legitimate, to their chosen 
leaders; while, unconscious of their danger, 
the ruling were straining the bonds of autho¬ 
rity, in exact proportion to the decrease of their 
number and their strength. It was when the 
future pastors of New England were training 
men to a generous contempt of all sublunary 
interest for conscience’ sake, that Laud, not 
content to be terrible to the founders of Con¬ 
necticut and New England, braved an enmity 
far more to be dreaded than theirs. With a 
view to the ends to which his life was devoted, 
his truth and courage would have been well 
exchanged for the wily and time-serving genius 
of Williams. Supported by Heylin, Cosins, 
Montague, and many others, who adopted or 
exaggerated his own opinions, he precipitated 
the temporary overthrow of a church, in har¬ 
mony with the character, and strong in the 
affections of the people ; upheld by a long line 
of illustrious names ; connected with the whole 
aristocracy of the realm; and enthusiastically 
defended by the sovereign. 

Baxter’s theological studies were com¬ 
menced during these tumults, and were insen¬ 
sibly biassed by them. The ecclesiastical 
polity had reconciled him to Episcopal ordi¬ 
nation ; but as he read, and listened, and ob¬ 
served his attachment to the established ritual 
and discipline progressively declined. He be¬ 
gan by rejecting the practice of indiscriminate 
communion. He was dissatisfied with the 
compulsory subscription to articles, and the 
baptismal cross. “ Deeper thoughts on the 
point of Episcopacy” were suggested to him 
by the et cetera oath; and these reflections soon 
rendered him an irreconcilable adversary to 
the “English diocesan frame.” He distributed 
the sacred elements to those who would not 
kneel to receive them, and religiously abjured 
the surplice. Thus ripe for spiritual censures, 
and prepared to endure them, he was rescued 
from the danger he had braved by the demon 
of civil strife. The Scots in the north, and 
the Parliament in the south, summoned Charles 
and Laud to more serious cares than those of 
enforcing conformity, and left Baxter free to 
enlarge and to propagate his discoveries. 

With liberty of speech and action, his mind 
was visited by a corresponding audacity of 
thought. Was there indeed a future life?— 
Was the soul of man immortal ?—Were the 
Scriptures true?—were the questions which 
now assaulted and perplexed him. Theycamq 
not as vexing and importunate suggestion^ 
but “ under pretence of sober reason,” and all 
the resources of his understanding were sum¬ 
moned to resist the tempter. Self-deception 
was abhorrent from his nature. He feared the 
face of no speculative difficulty. Dark as were 
the shapes which crossed his path, they must 
be closely questioned; and gloomy as was the 



60 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


abyss to which they led, it was to be unhesitat¬ 
ingly explored. The result needs not to be 
stated. From a long and painful conflict he 
emerged victorious, but not without bearing to 
the grave some scars to mark the severity of 
the struggle. No man was ever blessed with 
more profound convictions; but so vast and 
elaborate was the basis of argumentation on 
which they rested, that to re-examine the tex¬ 
ture, and ascertain the coherence of the ma¬ 
terials of which it was wrought, formed the 
still recurring labour of his whole future life. 

While the recluse is engulfed in the vortices 
of metaphysics, the victims of passion are still 
urged forward in their wild career of guilt and 
misery. From the transcendental labyrinths 
through which Baxter was winding his solitary 
and painful way, the war recalled him to the 
stern realities of life. In the immediate vicin¬ 
ity of the earlier military operations, Coventry 
had become a city of refuge to him, and to a 
large body of his clerical brethren. They be¬ 
lieved, in the simplicity of their hearts, that 
Essex, Waller, and Cromwell, were fighting 
the battles of Charles, and that their real ob¬ 
ject was to rescue the king from the thraldom 
of the malignants, and the church from the 
tyranny of the prelatists. “We kept,” says 
Baxter, speaking of himself and his associates, 
“ to our old principles, and thought all others had 
done so too, except a very few inconsiderable 
persons. We were unfeignedly for king and 
Parliament. We believed that the war was 
only to save the Parliament and kingdom from 
the papists and delinquents, and to remove 
the dividers, that the king might again return 
to his Parliament, and that no changes might 
be made in religion, but by the laws which had 
his free consent. We took the true happiness 
of king and people, church and state, to be our 
end, and so we understood the covenant, en¬ 
gaging both against papists and schismatics; 
and when the Court News-Book told the world 
of the swarms of Anabaptists in our armies, 
we thought it had been a mere lie, because it 
was not so with us.” 

Ontology and scholastic divinity have their 
charms, and never did man confess them 
more than Richard Baxter. But the pulse must 
beat languidly indeed, when the superior fasci¬ 
nation of the “ tented field” is not acknowledged; 
nor should it derogate from the reverence which 
attends his name, to admit that he felt and in¬ 
dulged this universal excitement. Slipping 
away from Durandus, Bradwardine, Suarez, 
and Ariminensis, he visited Edgehill and 
Naseby while the parliamentary armies still 
occupied the ground on which they had fought. 
He found the conquerors armed cap-a-pie for 
spiritual, as well as carnal combats; and to 
convert the troops from their theological errors, 
was the duty which, he was assured, had been 
committed to him by Providence. Becoming 
accordingly chaplain to Whalley’s regiment, 
he witnessed in that capacity many a skirmish, 
and was present at the sieges of Bristol, Sher¬ 
borne, and Worcester. Rupert and Goring 
proved less stubborn antagonists than the 
seekers and levellers of the lieutenant-gene¬ 
ral’s camp ; and Baxter was “ still employed 
la preaching, conferring, and still disputing 


against their confounding errors.” The soldiers 
discoursed as earnestly, and even published 
as copiously as himself. After many an affair 
of posts, the hostile parties at length engaged 
in a pitched battle at Amersham in Bucking¬ 
hamshire. “When the public talking-day 
came,” says Baxter, “I took the reading pew, 
and Pitchfora’s cornet and troopers took the 
gallery. There did the leader of the Chesham 
men begin, and afterwards Pitchford’s soldiers 
set in ; and I alone disputed against them from 
morning until almost night.” Too old a cam¬ 
paigner to retire from the field in the presence 
of his enemy, “ he staid it out till they first rose 
and went away.” The honours of the day 
were, however, disputed. In the strange book 
published by Edwards, under his appropriate 
title of “Gangraena,” the fortunes of the field 
were chronicled ; and there, as we are informed 
by Baxter himself, may be read “the abun¬ 
dance of nonsense uttered on the occasion.” 

Cromwell regarded these polemics with ill- 
disguised aversion, and probably with secret 
contempt. He had given Baxter but a cold 
welcome to the army. “ He would not dispute 
with me at all,” is a fact related by the good 
man with evident surprise; “but he would in 
good discourse very fluently pour out himself 
in the extolling of free grace, which was sa¬ 
voury to those that had right principles, though 
he had some misunderstanding of free grace 
himself. He was a man of excellent natural 
parts for affection and oratory, but not well 
seen in the principles of his religion ; of a san¬ 
guine complexion, naturally of such a vivacity, 
hilarity, and alacrity as another man hath when 
he hath drunken a cup too much; but natu¬ 
rally, also, so far from humble thoughts of 
himself, that it was his ruin.” The protector 
had surrendered his powerful mind to the reli¬ 
gious fashions of his times, and never found 
the leisure or the inclination for deep inquiry 
into a subject on which it was enough for his 
purposes to excel in fluent and savoury dis¬ 
course. Among those purposes, to obtain the 
approbation of his own conscience was not 
the least sincere. His devotion was ardent, 
and his piety genuine. But the alliance be¬ 
tween habits of criminal self-indulgence, and 
a certain kind of theopathy, is but too ordinary 
a phenomenon. That at each step of his pro¬ 
gress, Cromwell should have been deceived 
and sustained by some sophistry, is the less 
wonderful, since even now, in retracing his 
course, it is difficult to ascertain the point at 
which he first quitted the straight path of duty, 
or to discover what escape was at length open 
to him from the web in which he had become 
involved. There have been many worse, and 
few greater men. Yet to vindicate his name 
from the condemnation which rests upon it, 
would be to confound the distinctions of good 
and evil as he did, without the apology of being 
templed as he was. 

Baxter was too profound a moralist to be 
dazzled by the triumph of bad men, however 
specious their virtues; or to affect any com¬ 
placency towards a bad cause, though indebted 
to it for the only period of serenity which it 
ever was his lot to enjoy. He had ministered 
to the forces of the parliamentary general but 



61 


LIFE AND TIMES OF RICHARD BAXTER. 


abhorred the regicide and usurper. In his 
zeal for the ancient constitution, he had medi¬ 
tated a scheme for detaching his own regi¬ 
ment, and ultimately all the generals of the 
army, from their leader. They were first to 
be undermined by a course of logic, and then 
blown up by the eloquence of the preacher. 
This profound device in the science of theolo¬ 
gical engineering would have been counter¬ 
worked by the lieutenant-general, had he de¬ 
tected it, by methods somewhat less subtle, 
but certainly not less effective. A fortunate 
illness defeated the formidable conspiracy, and 
restored the projector to his pastoral duties 
and to peace. Even then, his voice was pub¬ 
licly raised against “the treason, rebellion, 
perfidiousness, and hypocrisy” of Cromwell, 
who probably never heard, and certainly never 
heeded, the denunciations of his former chap¬ 
lain. 

Baxter enjoyed the esteem which he would 
not repay. He was once invited by the pro¬ 
tector to preach at court. Sermons in those 
days were very serious things—point-blank 
shots at the bosoms of the auditory; and 
Cromwell was not a man to escape or fear the 
heaviest pulpit ordnance which could be 
brought to bear on him. From the many vul¬ 
nerable points of attack, the preacher selected 
the crying sin of encouraging sectaries. Not 
satisfied with the errors of his own days, the 
great captain had anticipated those of a later 
age, and had asserted in their utmost extent 
the dangerous principles of religious liberty. 
This latitudinarian doctrine may have been 
suggested by motives merely selfish ; and Bax¬ 
ter, at least, could acknowledge no deeper 
wisdom in which such an innovation could 
have had its birth. St. Paul was, therefore, 
made to testify “ against the sin committed by 
politicians, in maintaining divisions for their 
own ends, that they might fish in troubled 
waters.” He who now occupied the throne of 
the Stuarts claimed one prerogative to which 
even they had never aspired. It was that of 
controverting the argumentation of the pulpit. 
His zeal for the conversion of his monitor 
appears to have been exceedingly ardent. 
Having summoned him to his presence, “he 
began by a long tedious speech to me,” (the 
narrative is Baxter’s) “ of God’s providence in 
the change of the government, and how God 
had owned it, and what great things had been 
done at home and abroad, in the peace with 
Spain and Holland, &c. When he had wearied 
us all with speaking thus slowly for about an 
hour, I told him it was too great a condescen¬ 
sion to acquaint me so fully with all these 
matters, which were above me; but I told him 
that we took our ancient monarchy to be a 
blessing, and not an evil to the land; and hum¬ 
bly craved his patience that I might ask him 
how England had ever forfeited that blessing, 
and unto whom that forfeiture was made. 
Upon that question he was awakened into 
some passion, and then told me that it was no 
forfeiture, but God had changed it as pleased 
him; and then he let fly at the Parliament 
which thwarted him, and especially by name 
at four or five of those members who were my 
chief acquaintances, whom I presumed to de¬ 


fend against his passion, and thus four or five 
hours were spent.” 

During this singular dialogue, Lambert fell 
asleep, an indecorum which, in the court of 
an hereditary monarch, would have been fatal 
to the prospects of the transgressor. But the 
drowsiness of his old comrade was more tole¬ 
rable to Cromwell than the pertinacity of his 
former chaplain, against whom he a second 
time directed the artillery of his logic. On this 
occasion almost all the privy council were 
present; liberty of conscience being the thesis, 
Baxter the respondent, and Cromwell assuming 
to himself the double office of opponent and 
moderator. “ After another slow, tedious speech 
of his, I told him,” says the auto-biographer, 
“a little of my judgment, and when two of his 
company had spun out a great deal more of 
the time in such like tedious, but more igno¬ 
rant speeches, I told him, that if he would be 
at the labour to read it, I could tell him more 
of my mind in writing two sheets than in that 
way of speaking many days. He received the 
paper afterwards, but I scarcely believe that 
he ever read it. I saw that what he learnt 
must be from himself, being more disposed to 
speak many hours than hear one, and little 
heeding what another said when he had spoken 
himself.” 

Whatever may have been the faults, or 
whatever the motives of the protector, there 
can be no doubt that under his sway England 
witnessed a diffusion, till then unknown, of 
the purest influence of genuine religious prin¬ 
ciples. The popular historians of that period, 
from various motives, have disguised or mis¬ 
represented the fact; and they who derive their 
views on this subject from Clarendon or from 
Hudibras, mistake a caricature for a genuine 
portrait. To this result, no single man contri¬ 
buted more largely than Baxter himself, by 
his writings and his pastoral labours. His 
residence at Kidderminster during the whole 
of the protectorate was the sabbath of his life ; 
the interval in which his mind enjoyed the 
only repose of which it was capable, in labours 
of love, prompted by a willing heart, and un¬ 
impeded by a contentious world. 

Good Protestants hold, that the supreme 
Head of the Church reserves to himself alone 
to mediate and to reign, as his incommunica¬ 
ble attributes; and that to teach and to minis¬ 
ter are the only offices he has delegated to the 
pastors of his flock. Wisdom to scale the 
heights of contemplation, love to explore the 
depths of wretchedness—a science and a ser¬ 
vitude inseparably combined;—the one inves¬ 
tigating the relations between man and his 
Creator, the other busied in the cares of a self- 
denying philanthropy—such, at least in theory, 
are the endowments of that sacred institution, 
which, first established by the fishermen of Ga¬ 
lilee, has been ever since maintained through¬ 
out the Christian commonwealth. A priest¬ 
hood, of which all the members should be 
animated with this spirit, may be expected 
when angels shall resume their visits to our 
earth, and not till then. Human agency, even 
when employed to distribute the best gifts of 
Providence to man, must still bear the im 
press of human guilt and frailty. But if there 



02 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


be one object in this fallen world, to which the 
eye, jaded by its pageantries and its gloom, 
continually turns with renovated hope, it is to 
an alliance, such as that which bound together 
Richard Baxter and the people among whom 
he dwelt. He, a poor man, rich beyond the 
dreams of avarice in mental resources, conse¬ 
crating alike his poverty and his wealth to 
their service; ever present to guide, to soothe, 
to encourage, and, when necessary, to rebuke ; 
shrinking from no aspect of misery, however 
repulsive, nor from the most loathsome forms 
of guilt which he might hope to reclaim;—the 
instructer, at once, and the physician, the al¬ 
moner and the friend, of his congregation. 
They, repaying his labours of love with untu¬ 
tored reverence; awed by his reproofs, and 
rejoicing in his smile; taught by him to dis¬ 
charge the most abject duties, and to endure 
the most pressing evils of life, as a daily tri¬ 
bute to their Divine benefactor; incurious of 
the novelties of their controversial age, but 
meekly thronging the altar from which he dis¬ 
pensed the symbols of their mystical union 
with each other and their common Head; and, 
at the close of their obscure, monotonous, but 
tranquil course, listening to the same parental 
voice, then subdued to the gentlest tones of 
sympathy, and telling of bright hopes and of a 
glorious reward. Little was there in com¬ 
mon between Kidderminster and the “ sweet 
smiling” Auburn. Still less alike were the 
“ village preacher,” who “ ran his godly race,” 
after the fancy of Oliver Goldsmith, and the 
“painful preacher,” whose emaciated form, 
gaunt visage, and Geneva bands, attested the 
severity of his studies, and testified against 
prelatic ascendency. Deeper yet the contrast 
between the delicate hues and fine touches of 
the portrait drawn from airy imagination, and 
Baxter’s catalogue of his weekly catechizings, 
fasts, and conferences: of his Wednesday 
meetings and Thursday disputations; and of 
the thirty helps by which he was enabled to 
quicken into spiritual life the inert mass of a 
rude and vicious population. But, truth against 
fiction, all the world over, in the rivalry for 
genuine pathos and real sublimity. Ever new 
and charming, after ten thousand repetitions, 
the plaintive, playful, melodious poetry bears 
a comparison to the homely tale of the curate 
of Kidderminster, like that of the tapestried 
lists of a tournament with the well-fought field 
of Roncesvalles. Too prolix for quotation, 
and perhaps too sacred for our immediate 
purpose, it records one of those moral con¬ 
quests which bear their testimony to the exist¬ 
ence in the human heart of faculties, which, 
even when most oppressed by ignorance, or 
benumbed by guilt, may yet be roused to their 
noblest exercise, and disciplined for their ulti¬ 
mate perfection. 

Eventful tidings disturbed these apostolical 
labours, and but too soon proved how precarious 
was the tenure of that religious liberty which 
Baxter at once enjoyed and condemned. With 
the protectorate it commenced and ended. The 
death of Oliver, the abdication of Richard, the 
revival of the Long Parliament, the reappear¬ 
ance of the ejected members, the assembling 
of a new House of Commons under the auspices 


of Monk, and the restoration of the Smarts, 
progressively endangered, and at length sub¬ 
verted the edifice of ecclesiastical freedom, 
which the same strong hand had founded and 
sustained. Yet the issue for awhile seemed 
dbubtful. The sectarians overrated their own 
strength, and the Episcopalians exaggerated 
their own weakness. Infallible and impecca¬ 
ble, the Church of Rome is a Tadmor in the 
wilderness, miraculously erect and beautiful 
in the midst of an otherwise universal ruin. 

The Church of England, liable to err, but 
always judging right, capable of misconduct, 
but never acting wrong, is a still more stupen¬ 
dous exception to the weakness and depravity 
which in all other human institutions sig¬ 
nalizes our common nature. But for this well- 
established truth, a hardy skepticism might 
have ventured to arraign her as an habitual 
alarmist. If she is “in danger” at this mo¬ 
ment, she has been so from her cradle. Puri¬ 
tans and Presbyterians, Arminians, and Cal¬ 
vinists, Independents and Methodists, had for 
three centuries threatened her existence, when 
at last the matricidal hands of the metropoli¬ 
tan of all England, and of the prelate of Eng¬ 
land’s metropolis, were in our own days irreve¬ 
rently laid on her prebendal stalls. One, 
“ whose bosom’s lord sits lightly on his throne,” 
in the presence of all other forms of peril, has 
on this last fearful omen lost his accustomed 
fortitude; though even the impending over¬ 
throw of the church he adorns, finds his wit 
as brilliant, and his gayety as indestructible 
as of yore. What wonder, then, if the canons 
expectant of St. Pauls, at the Court of Breda, 
surveyed from that Pisgah the fair land of 
promise with faint misgivings, that the sons 
of Anak, who occupied the strongholds, should 
continue to enjoy the milk and honey of their 
Palestine? Thousands of intrusive incumbents, 
on whose heads no episcopal hand had been 
laid, and whose purity no surplice had ever 
symbolized, possessed the parsonages and pul¬ 
pits of either episcopal province. A popula¬ 
tion had grown up unbaptized with the sign 
of the cross, and instructed to repeat the longer 
and shorter catechisms of the Westminster 
divines. Thirty thousand armed Covenanters 
yielded to Monk and his officers a dubious 
submission. Cudworth and Lightfoot at Cam¬ 
bridge, Wilkins and Wallis at Oxford, occu¬ 
pied and adorned the chairs of the ejected 
lojmlists. -The divine right of episcopacy 
might yet be controverted by Baxter, Howe, 
and Owen; and Smectymnus might awaken 
from his repose in the persons of Marshall, 
Calamy, and Spurstow. Little marvel, that 
their eternal charter inspired a less exulting 
faith than of old in the bishops who had assem¬ 
bled at Breda; that Hyde and Southampton 
temporized; or that Charles, impatient of the 
Protestant heresy in all its forms, and of Chris¬ 
tianity itself in all its precepts, lent his royal 
name to an experiment of which deceit was 
the basis, and persecution the result. 

Liberty of conscience, and a concurrence in 
any act of Parliament, which, on mature deli¬ 
beration, should be offered for securing it, were 
solemnly promised by the king, while yet un¬ 
certain of the temper of the commons he was 



LIFE AND TIMES OF RICHARD BAXTER. 


about to meet. Ten Presbyterian ministers 
were added to the list of royal chaplains; and, 
for once a martyr to the public good, Charles 
submitted himself to the penalty of assisting 
at four of their sermons. That with which 
Baxter greeted him, could not have been re¬ 
cited by the most .rapid voice in less than two 
hours. It is a solemn contrast of the sensual 
and the spiritual life, without one courtly 
phrase to relieve his censure of the vices of 
the great. More soothing sounds were daily 
falling on the royal ear. The surplice and 
the Book, of Common Prayer had reappeared 
at the worship of the Lords and Commons. 
Heads and fellows of colleges enjoyed a resto¬ 
ration scarcely less triumphant than that of 
their sovereign. Long dormant statutes, arising 
from their slumbers, menaced the noncon¬ 
formists ; and the truth was revealed to the 
delighted hierarchy, that the Church of Eng¬ 
land was still enthroned in the affections of 
the English people—the very type of their na¬ 
tional character—the reflection of their calm 
good sense—of their reverence for hoar autho¬ 
rity—of their fastidious distaste for whatever is 
scenic, impassioned, and self-assuming—of 
their deliberate preference for solid reason, 
even when somewhat dull, to mere rhetoric, 
however animated—of their love for those 
grave observances and ancient forms which 
conduct the mind to self-communion, and lay 
open to the heart its long accumulated trea¬ 
sure of hidden, though profound emotions. 
Happy if the confidence in her own strength 
excited by this discovery, had been blended 
either with the forgiveness and the love which 
the Gospel teaches; or with the toleration in¬ 
culcated by human philosophy; or with the 
prudence which should be derived from a long 
course of suffering! Twenty-eight disgraceful 
years had been blotted from the annals of the 
Anglican church, and perhaps from the secu¬ 
lar history of England. 

The time w'as yet unripe for avowed retalia¬ 
tion, but wrongs and indignities such as those 
which the Episcopalians had suffered, were 
neither to be pardoned nor unavenged. In¬ 
vited by the king to prepare a scheme of future 
church government, Baxter and his friends, 
taking Usher’s “ Reduction of Episcopacy” as 
their basis, presented to Charles and the pre¬ 
lates a scheme of ecclesiastical reform. “As 
to Archbishop Usher’s model of government,” 
replied the bishops, “ we decline it as not con¬ 
sistent with his other learned discourses on the 
original of Episcopacy and of metropolitans, 
nor with the king’s supremacy in causes 
ecclesiastical.” “ Had you read Gerson, Bucer, 
Parker, Baynes, Salmasius, Blondel, &c.,” re¬ 
joined Baxter, “you would have seen just rea¬ 
son given for our dissent from the ecclesiastical 
hierarchy as established in England. You 
would easily grant that diocesses are too great, 
if you had ever conscionably tried the task 
which Dr. Hammond describeth as the bishop’s 
work, or had ever believed Ignatius’and others’ 
ancient descriptions of a bishop’s church.” 
Whither this war of words was tending, no by¬ 
stander could doubt. To maintain the splen¬ 
dour and the powers of Episcopacy, to yield 
nothing, and yet to avoid the appearance of a 


G3 

direct breach of the royal w'ord, was so glaringh 
the object of the court, that wilful blindness 
only could fail to penetrate the transparent 
veil of “The declaration” framed by Clarendor 
with all the astuteness of his profession, and 
accepted by the Presbyterians, with the eager¬ 
ness of expiring hope. Baxter was not so de¬ 
ceived. In common with the other heads o' 
his party, he judged the faith of Charles an in- 
adequate security, and refused the proffered' 
mitre of Hereford as an insidious bribe. 

There were abundant reasons for this distrust: 
Thanks for his gracious purposes in favour o' 
the nonconformists had been presented to the 
head of the church by the House of Commons, 
who immediately afterwards, at the instance 
of his majesty’s secretary of state, rejected 
the very measure which had kindled their 
gratitude. Three months had scarcely passed 
since the declaration had issued, when an order 
in council proclaimed the illegality of all reli¬ 
gious meetings held without the walls of the 
parochial churches. The Book of Common 
Prayer and the Statute-book were daily ce¬ 
menting their alliance, the one enlarged by a 
supplication for “ grace carefully and studiously 
to imitate the example of the blessed saint and 
martyr” who had now attained the honours of 
canonization; the other requiring the officers 
of all corporate and port towns “ to take the 
sacrament of the Lord’s Supper;” and to swear 
“ that it is not lawful, upon any pretence what¬ 
soever, to take arms against the king,” or 
against “those commissioned by him.” 

Amidst these parliamentary thunders were 
opened the conferences of the Savoy, which 
were to reduce to a definite meaning the de¬ 
clarations of Breda and of Whitehall. It was 
the scene of Baxter’s triumph and defeat—the 
triumph of his promptitude, subtlety, and 
boundless resource—the defeat of the last hope 
he was permitted to indulge, of peace to him¬ 
self or to the church of which he was then the 
brightest ornament. The tactics of popular 
assemblies form a system of licensed deceit; 
and their conventional morality tolerates the 
avowal of the skill by which the antagonist 
party has been overreached, and even an open 
exultation in the success of such contrivances. 
To embarrass the Presbyterians by the course 
of the discussion, to invent plausible pretexts 
for delay, and to guide the controversy to an 
impotent, if not a ludicrous close, were the 
scarcely concealed objects of the Episcopalians. 
Opposed to these by the feebler party were the 
contrivances by which weakness usually seeks 
to evade the difficulties it cannot stem, and the 
captiousness which few can restrain when 
overborne by the superior force of numbers or 
of authority. 

Whoever has seen a Parliament, may easily 
imagine a synod. Baxter was the leader of 
an unpopular opposition,—the Charles Fox of 
the Savoy, of which Morley was the William 
Pitt, and Gunning the Henry Dundas. To re¬ 
view the Book of Common Prayer, and “ to ad¬ 
vise and consult upon the same, and the several 
objections and exceptions which shall be raised 
against the same,” was the task assigned by 
Charles to twelve bishops, nine doctors of 
divinity, and twenty-one Presbyterian divines 




61 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


Jxalted by the acclamation of the whole Epis¬ 
copalian party to the head of all human writ¬ 
ings, not without some doubts whether it should 
not rather class with those of the sacred canon, 
the Book of Common Prayer was pronounced 
by the bishops, at the opening of the confer¬ 
ences, to be exempt from any errors which they 
could detect, and incapable of any improvements 
which they could suggest. They could not 
therefore advance to the encounter until their 
antagonists should have unrolled the long 
catalogue of their hostile criticisms and pro¬ 
jected amendments. From such a challenge 
it was not in Baxter’s nature to shrink, though 
warned by his associates of the motives by 
which it was dictated, and of the dangers to 
which it would lead. “ Bishop Sheldon,” says 
Burnet, “saw well enough what the effect 
would be of obliging them to make all their de¬ 
mands at once, that the number would raise a 
mighty outcry against them as a people that 
could never be satisfied.” In fourteen days 
Baxter prepared a new liturgy. In a few more 
he had completed his objections to the former 
rubric, with an humble petition for peace and 
indulgence. Fast and thick flew over the field 
the missiles of theological thesis before the 
closer conflict of oral debate. This was waged 
in high dialectic latitudes. Take the following 
example:—“ That command” (we quote the 
Episcopalian proponitur ) “ which enjoins only 
an act in itself lawful, and no other act where¬ 
by an unjust penalty is enjoined, or any cir¬ 
cumstance whence directly or per accidens any 
sin is consequent, which the commander ought 
to provide against, hath in it all things requisite 
to the lawfulness of a command, and particu¬ 
larly cannot be charged with enjoining an act 
per accidens unlawful, nor of commanding an 
act under an unjust penalty.” As an Indian 
listens to the war-cry of a hostile tribe, Baxter 
heard the announcement of this heretical doc¬ 
trine, and plunged headlong into the fight. 
Pouring fourth his boundless stores of meta¬ 
physical, moral, and scholastic speculation, he 
alternately plunged and soared beyond the 
reach of ordinary vision—distinguished and 
qualified, quoted and subtilized, till his voice 
was drowned “in noise and confusion, and 
high reflections on his dark and cloudy imagi¬ 
nation.” Bishop Sanderson, the moderator, 
adjudged the palm of victory to his opponent. 

“ Baxter and Gunning” (the words are Burnet’s) 

“ spent several days in logical arguing, to the 
diversion of the town, who looked upon them 
as a couple of fencers engaged in a dispute 
that could not be brought to any end.” It had, 
however, reached the only end which the king 
and his advisers had ever contemplated. An 
apology had been made for the breach of the 
royal promise. Henceforth the Presbyterians 
might be denounced as men whom reason could 
not convince, and who were therefore justly 
given up to the coercion of penal laws. To 
cast on them a still deeper shade of contumacy, 
some few trifling changes were made in the 
rubric by the convocation. The church was 
required to celebrate the martyrdom of the first 
Charles, and the restoration of the second,— 
that “ most religious and gracious king,” (the 
'.ast epithet with which in the same sentence 


the monarch was complimented and the Deity 
invoked;) and, as if still more certainly to ex¬ 
clude from her pale those who had sued in vain 
for entrance, Bel and the dragon, aud other 
worthies of the apocrypha, w r ere now called 
to take their stations in her weekly services. 

Had Charles been permitted to follow the 
dictates of his own easy nature, or of his reli¬ 
gious predilections, he would (though for pre¬ 
cisely opposite reasons) have emulated the 
zeal of Cromwell for liberty of conscience. 
He would gladly have secured that freedom to 
his Roman Catholic subjects; and would still 
more gladly have relieved himself from the 
trouble of persecuting the Protestant dissenters. 
But the time was still unripe for such hazard¬ 
ous experiments. At the dictation of Clarendon, 
he was made to assure his Parliament that he 
was “ as much in love with the Book of Common 
Prayer as they could wish, and had prejudices 
enough against those who did not love it.” 
Within two years from his return, the depth 
and sincerity of this affection were attested by 
the imprisonment of more than four thousand 
Quakers, and by the promulgation of the act 
of uniformity. Among the two thousand 
clergymen whom this law excluded from the 
church, Baxter was on every account the most 
conspicuous. He had refused the bishopric of 
Hereford, and the united interest of Charles 
and Clarendon had been exerted in vain (so 
with most elaborate hypocrisy it was pretended) 
to recover for him a curacy at Kidderminster. 
He for ever quitted that scene of his apostolic 
labours; and in the forty-seventh year of his 
age, bowed down with bodily infirmities, was 
driven from his home and his weeping con¬ 
gregation, to pass the remainder of his life in 
loathsome jails or precarious hiding-places; 
there to achieve, in penury and almost cease¬ 
less pain, works without a parallel in the 
history of English theological literature, for 
their extent, or their prodigality of mental 
resources. 

Solitude was not among the aggravations of 
his lot. Margaret Charlton was a lady of gen¬ 
tle birth, rich in the gifts of nature and of for¬ 
tune. She dwelt in her mother’s house at 
Kidderminster, where both parent and child 
found in Baxter their teacher and spiritual 
guide. “In her youth, pride and romances, and 
company suitable thereto, did take her up.” 
But sickness came, and he ministered to her 
anxieties; and health returned, and he led the 
thanksgiving of the congregation ; and there 
were mental conflicts in which he sustained 
her, and works of mercy in which he directed 
her, and notes were made of his sermons, and 
passages were transcribed from his consolatory 
letters, and gradually—but who needs to be told 
the result? Margaret was no ordinary woman. 
Her “ strangely vivid wit” is celebrated by the 
admirable John Howe ; and her widowed hus¬ 
band, in “The breviate of her life,” has drawn 
a portrait the original of which it would have 
been criminal not to love. Timid, gentle, and 
reserved, and nursed amidst all the luxuries of 
her age, her heart was the abode of affections 
so intense, and of a fortitude so enduring, that 
her meek spirit, impatient of one selfish wish, 
progressively acquired all the heroism of be- 






life and times of 

nevolence, and seemed at length incapable of 
one selfish fear. In prison, in sickness, in evil 
report, in every form of danger and fatigue, 
she was still with unabated cheerfulness at 
the side of him to whom she had pledged her 
. conjugal faithprompting him to the dis¬ 
charge of every duty, calming the asperities of 
his temper, his associate in unnumbered acts 
of philanthropy, embellishing his humble home 
by the little arts with which a cultivated mind 
imparts its own gracefulness to the meanest 
dwelling-place; and during the nineteen years 
of their union joining with him in one un¬ 
broken strain of filial affiance to the Divine 
mercy, and of a grateful adoration for the Di¬ 
vine goodness. Her tastes and habits had 
been moulded into a perfect conformity to his. 
He celebrates her Catholic charity to the op¬ 
ponents of their religious opinions, and her in¬ 
dexible adherence to her own; her high es¬ 
teem of the active and passive virtues of the 
Christian life, as contrasted with a barren 
orthodoxy; her noble disinterestedness, her 
skill in casuistry, her love of music, and her 
medicinal arts. Peace be to the verses which 
he poured out not to extol but to animate her 
devotion. If Margaret was wooed in strains 
over which Sacharissa would have slumbered, 
Baxter’s uncouth rhymes have a charm which 
Waller’s lyrics cannot boast—the charm of 
purity, and reverence, and truth. The Eloise 
ol Abelard, and the Eloise of Rousseau, reveal¬ 
ing but too accurately one of the dark chambers 
of the human heart, have poisoned the imagi¬ 
nation, and rendered it difficult to conceive of 
such ties as those which first drew together 
the souls of the nonconformist minister and his 
pupil;—he approaching his fiftieth and she 
scarcely past her twentieth year; he stricken 
with penury, disease, and persecution, and she 
in the enjoyment of affluence and of the world’s 
alluring smiles, it was not in the reign of 
Charles the Second, that wit or will were want¬ 
ing to ridicule, or to upbraid such espousals. 
Grave men sighed over the weakness of the 
venerable divine; and gay men disported 
themselves with so effective an incident in the 
tragi-comedy of life. Much had the great 
moralist written upon the benefits of clerical 
celibacy; for,“when he said so,he thought that 
he should die a bachelor.” Something he wrote 
as follows, in defence of his altered opinions: 

—“The unsuitableness of our age, and my for¬ 
mer known purposes against marriage and 
against the conveniency of minister’s marriage, 
who have no sort of necessity, made our mar¬ 
riage the matter of much talk;” but he most 
judiciously proceeds, “ the true opening of her 
case and mine, and the many strange occur¬ 
rences which brought it to pass, would take 
away the wonder of her friends and mine that 
knew us, and the notice of it would conduce to 
the understanding of some other passages of 
our lives. Yet wise friends, by whom I am 
advised, think it better to omit such personal 
particularities at this time. Both in her case 
and in mine there was much extraordinary, 
which it doth not much concern the world to 
be acquainted with.” Under this apology, it 
veiled the fact that Margaret herself first felt, 
or first betrayed the truth, that a sublunary af- 


RICHARD BAXTER. 65 

fection had blended itself with their devotional 
feelings; and that she encouraged him to claim 
that place in her heart which the holiest of 
human beings has still left for mere human 
sympathy. It was an attachment hallowed on 
either side by all that can give dignity to the 
passions to which all are alike subject. To 
her it afforded the daily delight of supporting 
in his gigantic labours, and of soothing in his 
unremitted cares, a husband who repaid her 
tenderness with unceasing love and gratitude. 
To him it gave a friend whose presence was 
tranquillity, who tempered by her milder wis¬ 
dom, and graced by her superior elegance, and 
exalted by her more confiding piety, whatever 
was austere, or rude, or distrustful in his 
rugged character. After all, it must be con¬ 
fessed that the story will not fall handsomely 
to any niche in the chronicles of romance; 
though, even in that light, Crabbe or Marmontel 
would have made something of it. Yet, un¬ 
supported by any powers of narrative, it is a 
tale which will never want its interest, so long 
as delight shall be felt in contemplating the 
submission of the sternest and most powerful 
minds to that kindly influence which cements 
and blesses, and which should ennoble human 
society. 

Over the declining years of Baxter’s life, 
friendship, as well as conjugal love, threw a 
glow of consolation which no man ever needed 
or ever valued more. His affectionate record 
of his associates has rescued some of their 
names from oblivion. Such is the case with 
“good old Simon Ash, who went seasonably 
to heaven at the very time he was to be cast 
out of the church; who, having a good estate, 
and a very good wife, inclined to entertain¬ 
ments and a liberality, kept a house much fre¬ 
quented by ministers, where, always cheerful, 
without profuse laughter, or levity, and never 
troubled with doublings,” he imparted to others 
the gayety of his own heart, and died as he 
had lived, “ in great consolation and cheerful 
exercise of faith, molested with no fears or 
doubts, exceedingly glad of the company of 
his friends, and greatly encouraging ail about 
him.” Such also was “good Mr. James Wai- 
ton, commonly called the weeping prophet; 
of a most holy blameless life, and, though 
learned, greatly averse to controversy and dis¬ 
pute ;” a man who had struggled successfully 
against constitutional melancholy, until trou¬ 
bled with the sad case of the ehureh and the 
multitude of ministers cast out, and at his own 
unserviceableness, he consumed to death.” 

To the Democritus and Heraclitus of non¬ 
conformity, a far greater name succeeds in the 
catalogue of Baxter’s friends. In the village 
of Acton, Sir Matthew Hale had found an oc¬ 
casional retreat from the cares of his judicial 
life; and devoted his leisure to science and 
theology, and to social intercourse with the 
ejected nonconformist. In an age of civil strife, 
he had proposed to himself the example of 
Atticus, and, like that accomplished person, 
endeavoured to avert the enmity of the con¬ 
tending parties by the fearless discharge of 
his duties to all, without ministering to the 
selfish ends of any. The frugal simplicity of 
his habits, his unaffected piety and studiou* 

p 2 





66 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


pursuits, enabled him to keep this hazardous 
path with general esteem, though he was more 
indebted for safety to his unrivalled eminence 
as a lawyer and a judge. Though Cromwell 
and Ludlow rebelled against the papal autho¬ 
rity of Westminster Hall, their age lagged far 
behind them. In the overthrow of all other 
institutions, the courts in which Fortescue 
and Coke had explained or invented the im¬ 
memorial customs of England, were still the 
objects of universal veneration; and the su¬ 
premacy of the law secured to its sages the 
homage of the people. Never was it rendered 
more justly than to Hale. With the exception 
of Roger North, we remember no historian of 
that day who does not bear an unqualified tes¬ 
timony to his uprightness, to the surpassing 
compass of his professional learning, and the 
exquisite skill with which it was employed. 
That agreeable, though most prejudiced writer, 
refuses him not only this, but the still higher 
praise of spotless patriotism, and ridicules 
his pretensions as a philosopher and divine. 
Baxter, an incomparably better judge, thought 
far otherwise. In the learning in which he 
himself excelled all others, he assigned a high 
station to Hale: and has recorded that his 
“ conference, mostly about the immortality of 
the soul and other philosophical and founda¬ 
tion points, was so edifying, that his very 
questions and objections did help me to more 
light than other men’s solutions.” Differing 
on those subjects which then agitated society, 
their minds, enlarged by nobler contempla¬ 
tions, rose far above the controversies of their 
age; and were united in efforts for their mutual 
improvement, and for advancing the interests 
of religion, truth, and virtue. It was a grave 
and severe, but an affectionate friendship; 
such as can subsist only between men who 
have lived in the habitual restraint of their 
lower faculties, and in the strenuous culture 
of those powers which they believe to be 
destined hereafter, and to be ripening now, for 
an indefinite expansion and an immortal ex¬ 
istence. 

From such intercourse Baxter was rudely 
called away. Not satisfied with the rigid uni¬ 
formity of professed belief and external obser¬ 
vances amongst the clergy of the established 
church, Parliament had denounced a scale of 
penalties, graduated from fine, to banishment 
to the plantations, against laics who should 
attend any other form of religious worship, 
even in private houses, where more than five 
strangers should be present. At Acton, a per¬ 
sonage of no mean importance watched over 
the ecclesiastical discipline of the parish. 
** Dr. Ryves, rector of that church and of Had- 
iey, dean of Windsor and of Wolverhampton, 
and chaplain in ordinary to the king,” could 
not patiently endure the irregularities of his 
iearned neighbour. The dean indeed officiated 
by deputy, and his curate was a raw and igno¬ 
rant youth; and Baxter (an occasional con¬ 
formist) was a regular attendant on all the 
sacred offices. But he refused the Oxford oath, 
and at his domestic worship there were some¬ 
times found more than the statutable addition 
to the family circle. Such offences demanded 
expiation. He was committed to Clerkenwell 


jail, and, when at length discharged from it, 
was compelled to seek a new and more hospi¬ 
table residence. He had his revenge. It was 
to obtain, through .the influence of one of his 
most zealous disciples, the charter which incor¬ 
porates the Church of England Society for the 
Propagation of the Gospel—a return of good 
for evil for which his name might well dis¬ 
place those of some of the saints in the ca¬ 
lendar. 

While the plague was depopulating London, 
and the silenced clergymen were discharging 
the unenvied office of watching over the mul¬ 
titude appointed to death, the king and Cla¬ 
rendon, at a secure distance from the conta¬ 
gion, were employed in framing the statute 
which denounced the most rigid punishment 
against any nonconformist minister who should 
approach within five miles of any town in 
England, or of any parish in which he had 
formerly officiated. Totteridge, a hamlet, round 
which a circle of ten miles in diameter could 
be drawn without including any of the resi¬ 
dences thus proscribed to Baxter, became his 
next abode, but was not permitted to be a 
place of security or rest. His indefatigable 
pen had produced a paraphrase on the New 
Testament, where the keen scrutiny of his 
enemies detected libels, to be refuted only by 
the logic of the court and prison of the King’s 
Bench. From the records of that court, Mr. 
Orme has extracted the indictment, w’hich sets 
forth, that “ Richardus Baxter, persona sedi- 
tiosa et factiosa, pravoe mentis, impise, inquietse, 
turbulent’ disposition’ et conversation’;”— 
“falso, illicite, injuste, nequit’, factiose, sedi- 
tiose, et irreligiose, fecit, composuit, scripsit 
quendam falsum, seditiosum, libellosum, fac- 
tiosum, et irreligiosum librum.” The classi¬ 
cal pleader proceeds fn a vein of unconscious 
humour to justify these hard words by the use 
of the figure called, we believe, a “ scilicet ” by 
those who now inhabit the ancient abode of 
the Knights Templars. “It is folly,” says the 
paraphrase, “ to doubt whether there be devils, 
v r hile devils incarnate dwell amongst us here,” 
(clericos pred’ hujus regni Angl’ innuendo.) 
“ What else but devils could make ceremo¬ 
nious hypocrites,’ (clericos pred’ innuendo:) 
“men that preach in Christ’s name,’ (seipsum 
R. B. et al’ seditiosas et factiosas person’ in¬ 
nuendo) “ therefore, are not to be silenced if 
they do, no more harm than good. Dreadful 
then is the case of men,” (episcopos et minis- 
tros justitiae infr’ hujus regni Angl’ innuendo) 
“ that silence Christ’s faithful ministers,” (seip¬ 
sum R. B. et al’ seditiosas et factiosas person’ 
innuendo.) 

Ansley and George Stevens were dull fel¬ 
lows compared with the great originals from 
which they drew. L’Estrange himself might 
have taken a lesson in the art of defamation, 
from this innuendoing special pleader. But 
the absurdity was crowned by the conduct of 
the trial. Abhorrence, disgust, indignation, 
and all other feelings of the sterner kind, gave 
way to the irresistible sense of the ludicrous, 
in some parts of the judicial career of Jeffries; 
and “ to be grave exceeds all powers of face,” 
in reading the narrative of this proceeding, 
which was drawn up by one of the spectators. 




67 


LIFE AND TIMES OF RICHARD BAXTER. 


The judge entered the court with his face 
flaming, “he snorted and squeaked, blew his 
nose and clenched his hands, and lifted up his 
eyes, mimicking their manner, and running 
on furiously, as he said they used to pray.” 
The ermined buffoon extorted a smile from the 
nonconformists themselves. Pollexfen, the 
leading counsel for the defence, gave into the 
humour, and attempted to gain attention for 
his argument by a jest. “My lord,” he said, 
“ some will think it a hard measure to stop 
these men’s mouths, and not to let them speak 
through their noses.” “ Pollexfen,” said Jef¬ 
fries, “I know you well. You are the patron 
of the taction; this is an old rogue who has 
poisoned the world, with his Kidderminster 
doctrine. He encouraged all the women to 
bring their bodkins and thimbles, to carry on 
the war against their king, of ever-blessed 
memory. An old schismatical knave—a hypo¬ 
critical villain.” “ My lord,” replied the coun¬ 
sel, “ Mr. Baxter’s loyal and peaceable spirit, 
King Charles would have rewarded with a 
bishopric, when he came in, if he would have 
conformed.” “Ay,” said the judge, “ we know 
that; but what ailed the old blockhead, the 
unthankful villain, that he would not conform ? 
Is he wiser or better than other men? He hath 
been, ever since, the spring of the faction. I 
am sure he hath poisoned the world with his 
linsey-woolsey doctrine, a conceited—stubborn, 
fanatical dog.” After one counsel, and an¬ 
other, had been overborne by the fury of Jef¬ 
fries, Baxter himself took up the argument. 
“ My lord,” he said, “ I have been so moderate 
with respect to the Church of England, that I 
have incurred the censure of many of the dis¬ 
senters on that account.” “ Baxter for bishops,” 
exclaimed the judge, “ is a merty conceit in¬ 
deed. Turn to it, turn to it!” On this one of 
the counsel turned to a passage in the libel, 
which stated, that “great respect is due to 
those truly called bishops amongst us. “ Ay,” 
said Jeffries, “this is your Presbyterian cant, 
truly called to be bishops; that is of himself 
and such rascals, called the bishops of Kidder¬ 
minster, and other such places. The bishops 
set apart by such factious—snivelling Presby¬ 
terians as himself; a Kidderminster bishop he 
means, according to the saying of a late learned 
author, every parish shall maintain a tythe-pig 
metropolitan.” Baxter offering to speak again, 
Jeffries exploded in the following apostrophe : 
“Richard! Richard! dost thou think here to 
poison the court? Richard, thou art an old 
fellow—an old knave ; thou hast written books 
enough to load a cart, every one as full of se¬ 
dition, I might say treason, as an egg is full of 
meat. Hadst thou been whipped out of thy 
writing trade forty years ago, it had been 
happy. I know that thou hast a mighty party, 
and I see a great many of the brotherhood in 
corners, waiting to see what will become of 
their mighty don, and a doctor of your party 
at your elbow; but I will crush you all. Come, 
what do you say for yourself, you old knave— 
come, speak up; what doth he say? I am not 
afraid of him, or of all the snivelling calves 
you have got about you,”—alluding to some ! 
persons who were in tears at this scene. 
“Your lordship need not,” said Baxter, “for 


I’ll not hurt you. But these things will surely 
be understood one day; what fools one sort of 
Protestants are made, to prosecute the other.” 
Then lifting up his eyes to heaven, he said, 
“ I am not concerned to answer such stuff, but 
am ready to produce my writings, in confuta¬ 
tion of all this; and my life and conversation 
are known to many in this nation.” 

The jury returned a verdict of guilty, am’ 
but for the resistance of the other judges, Jef¬ 
fries would have added whipping through the 
city to the sentence of imprisonment. It was 
to continue until the prisoner should have paid 
five hundred marks. Baxter was at that time 
in his 70th year. A childless widower, groan¬ 
ing under the agonies of bodily pain, and re¬ 
duced by former persecutions to sell all that 
he possessed; he entered the King’s Bench 
prison in utter poverty, and remained there for 
nearly two years, hopeless of any other abode 
on earth. But the hope of a mansion of eter¬ 
nal peace and love raised him beyond the 
reach of human tyranny. He possessed his 
soul in patience. Wise and good men resorted 
to his prison, and brought back greetings to 
his distant friends, and maxims of piety and 
prudence. Happy in the review of a well- 
spent life, and still happier in the prospect of 
its early close, his spirit enjoyed a calm for 
which his enemies might have well exchanged 
their mitres and their thrones. His pen, the 
faithful companion of his troubles, as of his 
joys, still plied the Herculean tasks which 
habit had rendered not merely easy, but de¬ 
lightful to him; and what mattered the gloomy 
walls or the obscene riot of a jail, while he 
was free to wander from early dawn to night¬ 
fall over the sublime heights of devotion, or 
through the interminable, but to him not path¬ 
less wilderness of psychology? There pain 
and mortal sickness were unheeded, and his 
long-lost wife forgotten, or remembered only 
that he might rejoice in their approaching re¬ 
union. The altered policy of the court restored 
him for awhile to the questionable advantage 
of bodily freedom. “ At this time,” says the 
younger Calamy, “he talked about another 
world, like one that had been there, and was 
come as an express from thence to make a 
report concerning it.” But age, sickness, and 
persecution had done their work. His mate¬ 
rial frame gave way to the pressure of disease, 
though, in the language of one of his last asso¬ 
ciates, “ his soul abode rational, strong in faith 
and hope,” That his dying hours were agi¬ 
tated by the doubts which had clouded his 
earlier days, has been often but erroneously 
asserted. With manly truth, he rejected, as 
affectation, the wish for death to which some 
pretend. He assumed no stoical indifference 
to pain, and indulged in no unhallowed fami¬ 
liarity on those awful subjects w r hich occupy 
the thoughts of him whose eye is closing on 
sublunary things, and is directed to an instant 
eternity. In profound loudiness, with a settled 
reliance on the Divine Mercy, repeating at fre¬ 
quent intervals the prayer of the Redeemer, on 
wdiom his hopes reposed, and breathing out 
benedictions on those who encircled his dying 
bed, he passed away from a life of almost une¬ 
qualled toil and suffering, to a new condition 




STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


68 ' 

of existence, where he doubted not to enjoy 
that perfect conformity of the human to the 
Divine will, to which, during his three-score 
years and ten, it had been his ceaseless labour 
to attain. 

The record of the solitary, rather than of the 
social hours of a man of letters, must form the 
staple of his biography, yet he must be a stren¬ 
uous reader, who should be able, from his own 
knowledge, to prepare such a record of the 
fruits of Richard Baxter’s solitude. After a 
familiarity of many years with his writings, it 
must be avowed, that of the one hundred and 
sixty-eight volumes comprised in the catalogue 
of his printed works, there are some which we 
have never seen, and many with which we can 
boast but a.very slight acquaintance. These, 
however, are such as (to borrow a phrase from 
Mr. Hallam) have ceased to belong to men, 
and have become the property of moths. From 
the recesses of the library in Red Cross street, 
they lower in the sullen majority of the folio 
page, over the pigmies of this duodecimo gene¬ 
ration ; the expressive, though neglected mon¬ 
uments of occurrences, which can never lose 
their place, or their interest, in the history of 
theological literature. 

The English Reformation produced no Lu¬ 
ther, Calvin, Zuingle, or Knox—no man who 
imparted to the national mind the impress of 
his own character, or the heritage of his reli¬ 
gious creed. Our reformers, Cranmer scarcely 
excepted, were statesmen rather than divines. 
Neither he, nor those more properly called the 
martyrs of the Church of England, ever at¬ 
tempted the stirring appeals to mankind at 
iarge, which awakened the echoes of the presses 
and the pulpits of Germany, Switzerland, and 
France. From the papal to the royal supre¬ 
macy—from the legatine to the archiepiscopal 
power—from the Roman missal to the Anglican 
liturgy, the transition was easy, and, in many 
respects, not very perceptible. An ambidexter 
controversialist, the English church warred at 
once with the errors of Rome and of Geneva; 
until relenting towards her first antagonist, 
she turned the whole power of her arms against 
her domestic and more dreaded enemy. To 
the resources of piety, genius, and learning, 
were added less legitimate weapons; and the 
Puritans underwent confiscation, imprison¬ 
ment, exile, compulsory silence, every thing, 
in short, except conviction. When the civil 
wars unloosed their tongues and gave freedom 
to their pens, they found themselves without 
any established standard of religious belief: 
every question debatable; and every teacher 
conscience-bound to take his share in the de¬ 
bate. Presbyterians, Independents, Anabap¬ 
tists, Seekers, Familists, Behmenists, and 
Quakers, were agreed only in cementing a firm 
alliance against their common enemies, the 
prelatists and papists. Those foes subdued, 
they turned against each other, some contend¬ 
ing for supremacy, and some for toleration, 
but all for what they severally regarded or pro¬ 
fessed to regard as truth. Nor were theirs the 
polemics of the schools or the cloister. The 
war of religious opinion was accompanied by 
the roar of Cromwell’s artillery—by the fall of 
ancient dynasties, and the growth of a military, 


though forbearing despotism. It was an age 
of deep earnestness. Frivolous and luxurious 
men had for awhile retreated to make way for 
impassioned and high-wrought spiritsthe 
interpreters at once of the ancient revelations 
and of the present judgments of Heaven, the 
monitors of an ungodly world, and the com¬ 
forters of those who bent beneath the weight 
of national and domestic calamities. Such 
were that memorable race of authors to whom 
is given collectively the name of the Puritan 
divines; and such, above all the rest, was 
Richard Baxter. Intellectual efforts of such 
severity as his, relieved by not so much as 
one passing smile: public services of such ex¬ 
tent, interrupted by no one recorded relaxation; 
thoughts so sleeplessly intent on those awful 
subjects, in the presence of which all earthly 
interests are annihilated, might seem a weight 
too vast for human endurance; as assuredly 
it forms an example which few would have the 
power, and fewer still the will, to imitate. His 
seventy-five years unbroken by any transient 
glance at gayety: his one hundred and sixty- 
eight volumes, where the fancy never disports 
herself; a mortal man absorbed in the solemn 
realities, and absolutely independent of all the 
illusions of life, appears like a fiction, and a 
dull one too. Yet it is an exact, and not an 
uninviting truth. 

Never was the alliance of soul and body 
formed on terms of greater inequality than in 
Baxter’s person. It was like the compact in 
the fable, where all the spoils and honours fall 
to the giant’s share, while the poor dwarf puts 
up with all the danger and the blows. The 
mournful list of his chronic diseases renders 
almost miraculous the mental vigour which 
bore him through exertions resembling those 
of a disembodied spirit. But his ailments were 
such as, without affecting his nervous energy, 
gave repose to his animal appetites, and 
quenched the thirst for all the emoluments and 
honours of this sublunary state. Death, though 
delaying to strike, stood continually before him, 
ever quickening his attention to that awful 
presence, by approaching the victim under 
some new or varied aspect of disease. Under 
this influence he wrote, and spoke, and acted—a 
dying man, conversant with the living in all their 
pursuits, but taking no share in their worldly 
hopes and fugitive emotions. Every returning 
day was welcomed and improved, as though it 
were to be his last. Each sermon might be a 
farewell admonition to his auditory. The sheets 
which lay before him were rapidly filled with 
the first suggestions of his mind in the first 
words which offered; for to-morrow’s sun 
might find him unable to complete the moment¬ 
ous task. All the graces and the negligences 
of composition were alike unheeded, for how 
labour as an artist when the voice of human 
applause might in a few short hours become 
inaudible! In Baxter, the characteristics of 
his age, and of his associates, were thus height¬ 
ened by the peculiarities of his own physical 
and mental constitution. Their earnestness 
passed in him into a profound solemnity; their 
diligence into an unrelaxing intensity of em¬ 
ployment; their disinterestedness into a fixed 
disdain of the objects for which other men con- 



69 


LIFE AND TIMES OF RICHARD BAXTER. 


tend. Even the episode of his marriage is in 
harmony with the rest. He renounced the 
property with which it would have encumbered 
him, and stipulated for the absolute command 
of his precarious and inestimable time. Had 
this singular concentration of thought and pur¬ 
pose befallen a man of quick sympathies, it 
would have overborne his spirits, if it had not 
impaired his reason. But Baxter was naturally 
stern. Had it overtaken a man of vivid imagi¬ 
nation, it would have engendered a troop of 
tantastic and extravagant day-dreams. But to 
Baxter’s natural vision all objects presented 
themselves with a hard outline, colourless, with 
no surrounding atmosphere. Had it been 
united to a cold and selfish heart, the result 
would have been a life of ascetic fanaticism. 
But his was an enlarged, though a calm 
philanthropy. His mind, though never averted 
from the remembrance of his own and of 
others’ eternal doom, was still her own sove¬ 
reign ; diligently examining the foundations 
and determining the limits of belief; method¬ 
izing her opinions with painful accuracy, and 
expanding them into all their theoretical or 
practical results, as patiently as ever analyst 
explored the depths of the differential calculus. 
Still every thing was to the purpose. “I have 
looked,” he says, “over Hutton, Vives, Eras¬ 
mus, Scaliger, Salmasius, Cassaubon, and 
many other critical grammarians, and all Gru- 
ter’s critical volumes. I have read almost all 
the physics and metaphysics I could hear of. 
I have wasted much of my time among loads 
of historians, chronologers, and antiquaries. I 
despise none of their learning—all truth is use¬ 
ful. Mathematics, which I have least of, I 
find a pretty and manlike sport; but if I have 
no other kind of knowledge than these, what 
were my understanding worth 1 What a dream¬ 
ing dotard should I bel I have higher thoughts 
of the schoolmen than Erasmus and our other 
grammarians had. I much value the method and 
sobriety of Aquinas, the subtlety of Scotus and 
Ockum,the plainness of Durandus, the solidity 
of Ariminensis, the profundity of Bradwardine, 
the excellent acuteness of many of their fol¬ 
lowers; of Aureolus, Capreolus, Bannes, Al¬ 
varez, Zumel, &c.; of Mayro, Lychetus, Trom- 
beta, Faber, Meurisse, Rada, &c;; of Ruiz, 
Pennattes, Saurez, Vasquez, &c.; of Hurtado, 
of Alberiinus, of Lud a Dola, and many others. 
But how loath should I be to take such sauce 
for my food, and such recreations for my busi¬ 
ness. The jingling of too much and false philo¬ 
sophy among them often drowns the noise of 
Aaron’s bells. I feel myself much better in 
Herbert’s temple.” 

Within the precincts of that temple, and to 
the melody of those bells, he accordingly pro¬ 
ceeded to erect the vast monument of his theo¬ 
logical works. Their basis was laid in a series 
of “ aphorisms on justification”—an attempt to 
fix the sense of the sacred volume on those 
topics which constitute the essential peculiar¬ 
ities of the Christian system. The assaults 
witn which the aphorisms had been encoun¬ 
tered were repelled by his “ Apology,” a large 
volume in quarto. The “ Apology” was, with¬ 
in a few months, re-enforced by another quarto, 
entitled his “ Confession of Faith.” Between 


four and five hundred pages of “Disputations” 
came to the succour of the “Confession.” 
Then appeared four treatises on the “Doctrine 
of Perseverance,” on “Saving Faith,” on 
“ Justify!ng Righteousness,” and on « Universal 
Redemption.” Next in order is a folio of seven 
Inquired pages, entitled “ Catholic Theology,” 
plain, pure, peaceable, unfolding and resolving 
all the controversies of the schoolmen, the 
papists and the Protestants. This was eclipsed 
by a still more ponderous folio in Latin, en¬ 
titled, “Methodus Tbeologae Christian®,” com¬ 
posed, to quote his own words. “ in my retire¬ 
ment. at Totteridge, in a troublesome, smoky, 
suffocating room, in the midst of daily pains 
of sciatica, and many worse.” After laying 
down the nature of Deity, and all things in 
general, he discloses all the relations, eternal 
and historical, between God and man, with all 
the abstract truths, and all the moral obligations 
deducible from them ;—detecting the universal 
presence of the trinity, not in the Divine Being 
only, but in all things psychological and ma¬ 
terial which flow from the great fountain of 
life. With an “End of Doctrinal Controver¬ 
sies,” a title, he observes, not intended as a 
prognostic, but as didactical and corrective— 
terminated his efforts to close up the mighty 
questions which touch on man’s highest hopes 
and interests. He had thrown upon them such 
an incredible multitude and variety of cross 
lights, as effectually to dazzle any intellectual 
vision less aquiline than his own. 

His next enterprise was to win mankind to 
religious concord. A progeny of twelve books, 
most of them of considerable volume, attest his 
zeal to this arduous cause. Blessed, we are 
told, are the peacemakers; but the benediction 
is unaccompanied with the promise of tran¬ 
quillity. He found, indeed, a patron in “His 
highness, Richard Lord Protector,” whose rule 
he acknowledged as lawful, though he had 
denied the authority of his father. Addressing 
that wise and amiable man, “I observe,” he 
says, “that the nation generally rejoice in your 
peaceable entrance upon the government. 
Many are persuaded that you have been 
strangely kept from participating in any of 
our late bloody contentions, that God might 
make you the healer of our breaches, and em¬ 
ploy you in that temple work which David 
himself might not be honoured with, though it 
was in his mind, because he shed blood abun¬ 
dantly, and made great wars.” Stronger minds 
and less gentle hearts than that of Richard re¬ 
pelled with natural indignation counsels which 
rebuked all the contending parties. Amongst 
these was “one Malpas, an old scandalous 
minister,” “ and Edward Bagshawe, a young 
man who had written formerly against mon¬ 
archy, and afterwards against Bishop Morley, 
and being of a resolute Roman spirit, was sent 
first to the Tower, and then lay in a horrid 
dungeon ;” and who wrote a book “full of un¬ 
truths, which the furious temerarious man did 
utter out of the rashness of his mind.” In his 
dungeon, poor Bagshawe died, and Baxter 
closes the debate with tenderness and pathos. 
“ While we wrangle here in the dark, we are 
dying, and passing to the world that will de¬ 
cide all our controversies, and the safest pas- 




70 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


sage thither is by peaceable holiness.” Dr. 
Owen, one of the foremost in the first rank of 
divines of his age, had borne much; but these 
exhortations to concord he could not bear; and 
he taught his monitor, that he who undertakes 
to reconcile enemies must be prepared for the 
loss of friends. It was on every account%. 
desperate endeavour. Baxter was opposed to 
every sect, and belonged to none. He can be 
properly described only as a Baxterian—at 
once the founder and the single disciple of an 
eclectic school, within the portals of which he 
invited all men, but persuaded none, to take 
refuge from their mutual animosities. 

Had Baxter been content merely to establish 
truth, and to decline the refutation of error, 
many might have listened to a voice so ear¬ 
nest, and to counsels so profound. But, “ while 
he spoke to them of peace, he made him ready 
for battle.” Ten volumes, many of them full- 
grown quartos, vindicated his secession from 
the Church of England. Five other batteries, 
equally well served, were successively opened 
against the Antinomians, the Quakers, the 
Baptists, the Millenarians, and the Grotians. 
The last, of whom Dodwell was the leader, 
typified, in the reign of Charles, the divines 
who flourish at Oxford in the reign of VictoVia. 
Long it were, and not very profitable, to record 
he events of these theological campaigns. 
They brought into the field Tillotson, Stilling- 
fleet, and Dodwell. The men of learning were 
aided by the men of wit. Under the nom de 
guerre of “Tilenus Junior,” Womack, the bi¬ 
shop of St. David’s, had incurred Baxter’s cen¬ 
sure for his “ abusive, virulent accusations of 
the synod of Dort.” To this attack appeared 
an answer, entitled, “ The Examination of Ti¬ 
lenus before the Triers, in order to his intended 
settlement in the office of a public preacher in 
the commonwealth of Utopia.” Among the 
jurors empannelled for the trial of Tilenus, 
are “Messrs. Absolute,” “Fatality,” “ Preteri- 
tion,” “Narrow Grace, alias Stint Grace,” 
“Take o’ Trust,” “Know Little,” and “Du¬ 
bious,”—the last the established sobriquet for 
Richard Baxter. But neither smile nor sigh 
could be extorted from the veteran polemic; 
nor, in truth, had he much right to be angry. 
If not with equal pleasantry, he had with at 
least equal freedom, invented appellations for 
his opponents;—designating Dodwell, or his 
system, as “Leviathan, absolute, destructive 
Prelacy, the son of Abaddon, Apollyon, and 
not of Jesus Christ.” Statesmen joined in the 
affray. Morice, Charles’s first secretary of 
state, contributed a treatise; and Lauderdale, 
who, with all his faults, was an accomplished 
scholar, and amidst all his inconsistencies, a 
stanch Presbyterian, accepted the dedication 
of one of Baxter’s controversial pieces, and 
presented him with twenty guineas. The un¬ 
varying kindness to the persecuted noncon¬ 
formist of one who was himself a relentless 
persecutor, is less strange than the fact, that 
the future courtier of Charles read, during his 
imprisonment at Windsor, the whole of Bax¬ 
ter’s then published works, and, as their grate¬ 
ful author records, remembered them better 
than himself. While the pens of the wise, the 
witty, and the great, were thus employed against 


the universal antagonist, the Quakers assailed 
him with their tongues. WTio could recognise, 
in the gentle and benevolent people who now 
bear that name, a trace of their ancestral cha¬ 
racter, of which Baxter has left the following 
singular record 1 “ The Quakers in their shops, 
when I go along London streets, say, alas! 
poor man, thou art yet in darkness. They 
have often come to the congregation, when I 
had liberty to preach Christ’s gospel, and cried 
out against me as a deceiver of the people. 
They have followed me home, crying out in 
the streets, ‘the day of the Lord is coming, 
and thou shalt perish as a deceiver.’ They 
have stood in the market-place, and under my 
window, year after year, crying to the people, 
‘ take heed of your priests, they deceive your 
souls;’ and if any one wore a lace or neat 
clothing, they cried out to me, ‘ these are the 
fruits of your ministry.’ ” 

Against the divorce of divinity and politics, 
Baxter vehemently protested, as the putting 
asunder of things which a sacred ordinance 
had joined together. He therefore published a 
large volume, entitled “The Holy Common¬ 
wealth ; a Plea for the cause of Monarchy, but 
as under God the Universal Monarch.” Far 
better to have roused against himself all the 
quills which had ever bristled on all the “fret¬ 
ful porcupines” of theological strife. For, 
while vindicating the ancient government of 
England, he hazarded a distinct avowal of 
opinions, which, with their patrons, were to 
be proscribed with the return of the legitimate 
sovereign. He taught that the laws of Eng¬ 
land are above the king; that Parliament was 
his highest court, where his personal will and 
word were not sufficient authority. He vindi¬ 
cated the war against Charles, and explained 
the apostolical principle of obedience to the 
higher powers as extending to the senate as 
well as to the emperor. The royal power had 
been given “ for the common good, and no 
cause could warrant the king to make the com¬ 
monwealth the party which he should exercise 
hostility against.” All this was published at 
the moment of the fall of Richard Cromwell. 
Amidst the multitude of answers which it pro¬ 
voked maybe especially noticed those of Har¬ 
rington, the author of the “ Oceana,” and of 
Edward Pettit. “ The former,” says Baxter, 
“ seemed in a Bethlehem rage, for, by way of 
scorn, he printed half a sheet of foolish jests, 
in such words as idiots or drunkards use, 
railing at ministers as a pack of fools and 
knaves, and, by his gibberish derision, per¬ 
suading men that we deserve no other answer 
than such scorn and nonsense as beseemeth 
fools. With most insolent pride, he carried it 
as neither I nor any ministers understood at 
all what policy was; but prated against we 
knew not what, and had presumed to speak 
against other men’s art which he was master 
of, and his knowledge, to such idiots as we, 
incomprehensible.” Pettit placed Baxter in 
hell, where Bradshawe acts as president, and 
Hobbes and Neville strive in vain for the 
crown which he awards to the nonconformist 
for pre-eminence of evil and mischief on earth. 
“Let him come in,” exclaims the new Rhada- 
manthus, “ and be crowned with wreaths of 




71 


LIFE AND TIMES OF RICHARD BAXTER. 


serpents, and chaplets of adders. Let his tri¬ 
umphant chariot be a pulpit drawn on the 
wheels of cannon by a brace of wolves in 
sheep’s clothing. Let the ancient fathers of 
the Church, whom out of ignorance he has 
vilified; the reverend and learned prelates, 
whom out of pride and malice he has belied, 
abused, and persecuted; the most righteous 
king, whose murder he has justified—let them 
all be bound in chains to attend his infernal 
triumph to his ‘Saint’s Everlasting Rest;’ then 
make room, scribes and pharisees, hypocrites, 
atheists, and politicians, for the greatest rebel 
on earth, and next to him that fell from hea¬ 
ven.” Nor was this all. The “Holy Com¬ 
monwealth” was amongst the books which the 
University of Oxford sentenced to the flames 
which had been less innocently kindled at the 
same place in a former generation, against the 
persons of men who had dared to proclaim 
unwelcome truths. Morley and many others 
branded it as treason ; and the king was taught 
to regard the author as one of the most invete¬ 
rate enemies of the royal authority. South 
joined in the universal clamour; and Baxter, 
in his autobiography, records, that when that 
great wit and author had been called to preach 
before the king, and a vast congregation drawn 
together by his high celebrity, he was com¬ 
pelled, after a quarter of an hour, to desist, and 
to retire from the pulpit exclaiming, “ the Lord 
be merciful to our infirmities !” The sermon, 
which should have been recited, was after¬ 
wards published, and it appeared that the pas¬ 
sage at which South’s presence of mind had 
failed him, was an invective against the “ Holy 
Commonwealth.” After enduring for ten years 
the storm which his book had provoked, Bax¬ 
ter took the very singular course of publishing 
a revocation, desiring the world to consider it 
as non scriptum ,-—maintaining the while the 
general principles of his work, and “protest¬ 
ing against the judgment of posterity, and all 
others that were not of the same time and 
place, as to the mental censure either of the 
book or revocation, as being ignorant of the 
true reasons of them both.” We, therefore, 
v.'ho, for the present, constitute the posterity, 
against whose rash judgment this protest was 
entered, should be wary in censuring what, it 
must be confessed, is not very intelligible, ex¬ 
cept, indeed, as it is not difficult to perceive, 
motives enough for retreating from an unpro¬ 
fitable strife, even, though the retreat could not 
be very skilfully accomplished. 

Two volumes of Ecclesiastical History, the 
first a quarto of five hundred pages, the second 
a less voluminous vindication of its predeces¬ 
sor, attest the extent of Baxter’s labours in 
this department of theological literature, and 
the stupendous compass of his reading. The 
authorities he enumerates, and from a diligent 
study of which his work is drawn, would form 
a considerable library. 

Such labours as those we have mentioned, 
might seem to have left no vacant space in a 
life otherwise so actively employed. But these 
books, and the vast mass of unpublished ma¬ 
nuscripts, are not the most extensive,* as they 
are incomparably the least valuable, of the 
produce of his solitary hours. 


With the exception of Grotius, Baxter is the 
first of that long series of writers who have 
undertaken to establish the truth of Chris¬ 
tianity, by a systematic exhibition of the evi¬ 
dence and the arguments in favour of the 
divine origin of our faith. All homage to their 
cause, for we devoutly believe it to be the 
cliuse of truth ! Be it acknowledged that their 
labours could not have been declined, without 
yielding a temporary and dangerous triumph 
to sophistry and presumptuous ignorance. 
Admit (as indeed it is scarcely possible to 
exaggerate) their boundless superiority to their 
antagonists in learning, in good faith, in saga¬ 
city, in range and depth of thought, and in 
whatever else was requisite in this momentous 
controversy;—concede, as for ourselves we 
delight to confess, that they have advanced 
their proofs to the utmost heights of probabi¬ 
lity which by such reasonings it is possible to 
scale ;—with these concessions may not incon¬ 
sistently be combined some distaste for these 
inquiries, and some doubt of their real value. 

The sacred writers have none of the timi¬ 
dity of their modern apologists. They never 
sue for an assent to their doctrines, but autho¬ 
ritatively command the acceptance of them. 
They denounce unbelief as guilt, and insist on 
faith as a virtue of the highest order. In their 
Catholic invitations, the intellectual not less 
than the social distinctions of mankind are 
unheeded. Every student of their writings is 
aware of these facts; but the solution of them 
is less commonly observed. It is, we appre¬ 
hend, that the apostolic authors assume the 
existence in all men of a spiritual discern¬ 
ment, enabling the mind, when unclouded by 
appetite or passion, to recognise and distin¬ 
guish the Divine voice, whether uttered from 
within by the intimations of conscience, or 
speaking from without in the language of in¬ 
spired oracles. They presuppose that vigour 
of understanding may consist with feebleness 
of reason; and that the power of discriminat¬ 
ing between religious truths and error does 
not chiefly depend on the culture, or on the 
exercise of the mere argumentative faculty. 
The especial patrimony of the poor and illite¬ 
rate—the gospel—has been the stay of count¬ 
less millions who never framed a syllogism. 
Of the great multitudes whom no man can 
number, who before and since the birth of 
Grotius have lived in the peace, and died in 
the consolations of our faith, how incompara¬ 
bly few are they whose convictions have been 
derived from the study of works like his ! Of 
the numbers who have addicted themselves to 
such studies, how small is the proportion of 
those who have brought to the task either 
learning, or leisure, or industry sufficient to 
enable them to form an independent judgment 
on the questions in debate ! Called to the ex¬ 
ercise of a judicial function for which he is 
but ill prepared—addressed by pleadings on an 
issue where his prepossessions are all but un 
al'erable, bidden to examine evidences which 
he has most rarely the skill, the learning, oi 
the leisure to verify, and pressed by argu¬ 
ments, sometimes overstrained, and sometimes 
fallacious—he who lays the foundations of his 
faith in such “ evidences” will but too com 




72 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


monly end either in yielding a credulous, and 
therefore an infirm assent, or by reposing in a 
self-sufficient and far more hazardous incre¬ 
dulity. 

For these reasons, we attach less value to 
the long series of Baxter’s works in support 
of the foundations of the Christian faith than 
to the rest of his books which have floated in 
safety down the tide of time to the present day. 
Yet it would be difficult to select, from the 
same class of writings, any more eminently 
distinguished by the earnest love and the fear¬ 
less pursuit of truth; or to name an inquirer 
into these subjects who possessed and exer¬ 
cised to a greater extent the power of suspend¬ 
ing his long-cherished opinions, and of closely 
interrogating every doubt by which they were 
obstructed. 

In h is solicitude to sustain the conclusions 
he had so laboriously formed, Baxter unhappily 
invoked the aid of arguments, which, however 
impressive in his own days, are answered in 
ours by a smile, if not by a sneer. The sneer, 
however, would be at once unmerited and un¬ 
wise. When Hale was adjudging witches to 
death, and More preaching against their guilt, 
and Boyle investigating the sources of their 
power, it is not surprising that Baxter availed 
himself of the evidence afforded by witchcraft 
and apparitions in proof of the existence of a 
world of spirits; and therefore in support of 
one of the fundamental tenets of revealed reli¬ 
gion. Marvellous, however, it is, in running 
over his historical discourse on that subject, to 
find him giving so unhesitating an assent to 
the long list of extravagances and nursery 
tales which he has there brought together; 
unsupported as they almost all are by any 
proof that such facts occurred at all, or by 
any decorous pretext for referring them to pre¬ 
ternatural agency. Simon Jones, a stout-hearted 
and able-bodied soldier, standing sentinel at 
Worcester, was driven away from his post by 
the appearance of something like a headless 
bear. A drunkard was warned against intem¬ 
perance by the lifting up of his shoes by an 
invisible hand. One of the witches condemned 
by Hale threw a girl into fits. Mr. Emlin, a 
bystander, “ suddenly felt a force pull one of 
the hooks from his breeches, and, while he 
looked with wonder what had become of it, 
the tormented girl vomited it up out of her 
mouth.” At the house of Mr. Beecham, there 
was a tobacco pipe which had the habit of 
“moving itself from a shelf at the one end of 
the room to a shelf at the other end of the 
room.” When Mr. Munn, the minister, went 
to witness the prodigy, the tobacco pipe re¬ 
mained stationary; but a great Bible made a 
spontaneous leap into his lap, and opened 
itself at a passage, on the hearing of which 
the evil spirit who had possessed the pipe was 
exorcised. “This Mr. Munn himself told me, 
when in the sickness year, 1665, I lived in 
Stockerson hall. I have no reason to suspect 
the veracity of a sober man, a constan t preacher, 
and a good scholar.” Baxter was credulous 
and incredulous for precisely the same reason. 
Possessing by long habit a mastery over his 
thoughts, such as few other men ever acquired, 
a single effort of the will was sufficient to ex¬ 


clude from his view whatever recollections he 
judged hostile to his immediate purpose. 
Every prejudice was at once banished when 
any debatable point was to be scrutinized; 
and, with equal facility, every reasonable 
doubt was exiled when bis only object was to 
enforce or illustrate a doctrine of the truth of 
which he was assured. The perfect submis¬ 
sion of the will to the reason may belong to 
some higher state of being than ours. On 
mortal man that gift is not bestowed. In the 
best and the wisest, inclination will often grasp 
the reins by which she ought to be guided, 
and misdirect the judgment which she should 
obey. Happy they, who, like Baxter, have so 
disciplined the affections, as to disarm their 
temporary usurpation of all its more dangerous 
tendencies! 

Controversies are ephemeral. Ethics, meta¬ 
physics and political philosophy are doomed 
to an early death, unless when born of genius 
and nurtured by intense and self-denying in¬ 
dustry. Even the theologians of one age must, 
alas ! too often disappear to make way for those 
of later times. But if there is an exception to 
the general decree which consigns man and 
his intellectual offspring to the same dull for¬ 
getfulness, it is in favour of such writings as 
those which fill the four folio volumes bearing 
the title of “Baxter’s Practical Works.” Their 
appearance in twenty-three smart octavos is 
nothing short of a profanation. Hew down the 
Pyramids into a range of streets, divide Niagara 
into a succession of water privileges, but let 
not the spirits of the mighty dead be thus 
evoked from their majestic shrines to animate 
the dwarfish structures of our bookselling 
generation. Deposit one of those gray folios 
on a resting-place equal to that venerable 
burden, then call up the patient and serious 
thoughts which its very aspect-should inspire, 
and confess that, among the writings of unin¬ 
spired men, there are none better fitted to 
awaken, to invigorate, to enlarge, or to console 
the mind, which can raise itself to such celestial 
colloquy. True, they abound in undistinguish- 
able distinctions ; the current of emotion, when 
flowing most freely, is but too often obstructed 
by metaphysical rocks and shallows, or di¬ 
verted from its course into some dialectic 
winding; one while the argument is obscured 
by fervent expostulation ; at another the passion 
is dried up by the analysis of the ten thousand 
springs of winch it is compounded; here is a 
maze of subtleties to be unravelled, and there 
a crowd of the obscurely learned to be refuted ; 
the unbroken solemnity may shed some gloom 
on the traveller’s path, and the length of the 
way may now and then entice him to slumber. 
But where else can be found an exhibition, at 
once so vivid and so chaste, of the diseases of 
the human heart—a detection so fearfully exact, 
of the sophistries of which we are first the vo¬ 
luntary and then the unconscious victims—a 
light thrown with such intensity on the madness 
and the wo of every departure from the rules 
of virtue — a development of those rules so 
comprehensive and so elevated — counsels 
more shrewd or more persuasive—or a pro¬ 
clamation more consolatory of the resources 
provided by Christianity for escaping the dan-* 





73 


LIFE AND TIMES OF RICHARD BAXTER. 


gers by which we are surrounded—of the 
eternal rewards she promises—or of the tem¬ 
poral blessings she imparts, as an earnest and 
a foretaste of them 1 , “ Largfor hie campis 
xther. Charles, and Laud, and Cromwell are 
forgotten. We have no more to do with anti- 
pacdobaptism or prelacy. L’Estrange and 
Morley disturb not this higher region ; but man 
and his noblest pursuits—Deity, in the highest 
conceptions of his attributes which can be ex¬ 
tracted from the poor materials of human 
thought—the world we inhabit divested of the 
illusions which insnare us—the word to which 
we look forward bright with the choicest 
colours of hope—the glorious witnesses, and 
the Divine Guide and Supporter of our conflict 
—throng, animate, and inform every crowded 
page. In this boundless repository, the intima¬ 
tions of inspired wisdom are pursued into all 
their bearings on the various conditions and 
exigencies of life, with a fertility which would 
inundate and overpower the most retentive 
mind, had it not been balanced by a method 
and a discrimination even painfully elaborate. 
Through the vast accumulation of topics, ad¬ 
monitions, and inquiries, the love of truth is 
universally conspicuous. To every precept is 
appended the limitations it seems to demand. 
No difficulty is evaded. Dogmatism is never 
permitted to usurp the province of argument. 
Each equivocal term is curiously defined, and 
each plausible doubt narrowly examined. Not 
content to explain the results he has reached, 
he exhibits the process by which they were ex¬ 
cogitated, and lays open all the secrets of his 
mental laboratory. And a wondrous spectacle 
it is. Calling to his aid an extent of theological 
and scholastic lore sufficient to equip a whole 
college of divines, and moving beneath the load 
with unencumbered freedom, he expatiates and 
rejoices in all the intricacies of his way—now 
plunging into the deepest thickets of casuistic 
and psychological speculation — and then 
emerging from them to resume his chosen task 
of probing the conscience, by remonstrances 
from which there is no escape—or of quicken¬ 
ing the sluggish feelings by strains of exalted 
devotion. 

That expostulations and arguments of which 
almost all admit the justice, and the truth of 
which none can disprove, should fall so inef¬ 
fectually on the ear, and so seldom reach the 
heart, is a phenomenon worthy of more than a 
passing notice, and meriting an inquiry of 
greater exactness than it usually receives, even 
from those who profess the art of healing our 
spiritual maladies. To resolve it “ into the 
corruption of human nature,” is but to change 
the formula in which the difficulty is proposed. 
To affirm that a corrupt nature always gives 
an undue preponderance to the present above 
the future, is untrue in fact; for some of our 
worst passions—avarice, for example, revenge, 
ambition, and the like—chiefly manifest their 
power in the utter disregard of immediate pri¬ 
vations and sufferings, with a view to a sup¬ 
posed remote advantage. To represent the 
world as generally incredulous as to the reality 
of a retributive state, is to contradict universal 
experience, which shows how firmly that per¬ 
suasion is incorporated with the language, 

10 


habits, and thoughts of mankind;—manifesting 
itself most distinctly in those great exigencies 
of life, when disguise is the least practicable. 
To refer to an external spiritual agency, de¬ 
termining the will to a wise or a foolish choice, 
is only to reproduce the original question in 
another form — what is that structure or 
mechanism of the human mind by means of 
which such influences operate to control or 
guide our volitions ? The best we can throw 
out as an answer to the problem is, that the 
constitution of our frames, partly sensitive and 
partly rational, and corresponding with this 
the condition of our sublunary existence, 
pressed by animal as well as by spiritual wants, 
condemns us to a constant oscillation between 
the sensual and the divin#, between the pro¬ 
pensities which we share with the brute crea¬ 
tion, and the aspirations which connect us with 
the author of our being. The rational soul 
contemplates means only in reference to their 
ends; whilst the sensuous nature reposes in 
means alone, and looks no farther. Imagina¬ 
tion, alternately the ally of each, most readily 
lends her powerful aid to the ignobler party. 
Her golden hues are more easily employed to 
exalt and refine the grossness of appetite, than 
to impart brilliancy and allurement to objects 
brought within the sphere of human vision by 
the exercise of faith and hope. Her draperies 
are adjusted' with greater facility, to clothe the 
nakedness and to conceal the shame of those 
things with which she is most conveisant, 
than to embellish the forms, and add grace to 
the proportions of things obscurely disc'osed 
at. few and transient intervals. It is with this 
formidable alliance of sense and imagination 
that religion has to contend. Her aim is to 
win over to her side that all-powerful mental 
faculty which usually takes part with her 
antagonist, and thus to shed over every step in 
life the colours borrowed from its ultimate as 
contrasted with its immediate tendency;—to 
teach us to regard the pleasures and the pains 
of our mortal state in the light in which we 
shall view them in our immortal existence; to 
make things hateful or lovely now, according 
as they impede or promote our welfare here¬ 
after. He is a religious, or in the appropriate 
language of theology, a “ regenerate” man, 
who, trained to this discipline, habitually trans¬ 
fers to the means he employs, the aversion or 
the dislike due to the end he contemplates; 
who discerns and loathes the poison in the 
otherwise tempting cup of unhallowed indul¬ 
gence, and perceives and loves the medicinal 
balm in the otherwise bitter draught of hardy 
self-denial. Good Richard Baxter erected his 
four folio volumes as a dam with which to 
stay this confluent flood of sense and imagina 
tion, and to turn aside the waters into a more 
peaceful and salutary channel. When their 
force is correctly estimated, it is more reason¬ 
able to wonder that he and his fellow-labourers 
have succeeded so well, than that their success 
has been no greater. 

On his style as an author, Baxter himself is 
the best critic. “The commonness and the 
greatness of men’s necessity,” he says, “com¬ 
manded me to do any thing that I could for 
their relief, and to bring forth some water to 






74 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


cast upon this fire, though I had not at hand a 
silver vessel to carry it in, nor thought it the 
most fit. The plainest words are the most 
profitable oratory in the weightiest matters. 
Fineness for ornament, and delicacy for delight; 
but they answer not necessity, though some¬ 
times they may modestly attend that which 
answers it.” He wrote to give utterance to a 
full mind and a teeming spirit. Probably he 
never consumed forty minutes in as many 
years, in the mere selection and adjustment of 
words. So to have employed his time, would 
in his judgment have been a sinful waste of 
that precious gift. “I thought to have ac¬ 
quainted the world with nothing but what was 
the work of time and diligence, but my con¬ 
science soon told me that there was too much 
of pride and selfishness in this, and that hu¬ 
mility and self-denial required me to lay by 
the affectation of that style, and spare that in¬ 
dustry which tended but to advance my name 
with men, when it hindered the main work and 
crossed my end.” Such is his own account; 
and, had he consulted Quinctilian, he could 
have found no better precept for writing well 
than that which his conscience gave him for 
writing usefully. First of all the requisites for 
excelling in the art of composition, as one of 
the greatest masters of that art in modern 
times, Sir Walter Scott, informs us, is “ to have 
something to say.” When there are thoughts 
that burn, there never will be wanting words 
that breathe. Baxter’s language is plain and 
perspicuous when his object is merely to in¬ 
form ; copious and flowing when he exhorts; 
and when he yields to the current of his feel¬ 
ings, it becomes redundant and impassioned, 
and occasionally picturesque and graphic. 
There are innumerable passages of the most 
touching pathos and unconscious eloquence, 
but not a single sentence written for effect. 
His chief merit as an artist is, that he is per¬ 
fectly artless; and that he employs a style of 
great compass and flexibility, in such a manner 
as to demonstrate that he never thought about 
it, and as to prevent the reader, so long at 
least as he is reading, from thinking about it 
either. 

The canons of criticism, which the great 
nonconformist drew from his conscience, are 
however, sadly inapplicable to verse. Mr. 
James Montgomery has given his high suffrage 
in favour of Baxter’s poetical powers, and 
justifies his praise by a few passages selected 
from the rest with equal tenderness and discre¬ 
tion. It is impossible to subscribe to this 
heresy even in deference to such an authority; 
or to resist the suspicion that the piety of the 
critic has played false with his judgment. No¬ 
thing short of an actual and plenary inspiration 
will enable any man who composes as rapidly 
as he writes, to give meet utterance to those 
ultimate secretions of the deepest thoughts and 
the purest feelings in which the essence of 
poetry consists. Baxter’s verses, which how¬ 
ever are not very numerous, would be decid¬ 
edly improved by being shorn of their rhyme 
and rhythm, in which state they would look 
like very devout and judicious prose, as they 
really are. 

Every man must and will have some relief 


from his more severe pursuits. His faitnfl.il 
pen attended Baxter in his pastime as in his 
studies; and produced an autobiography, which 
appeared after his death in a large folio vo¬ 
lume. Calamy desired to throw these posthu¬ 
mous sheets into the editorial crucible, and to 
reproduce them in the form of a corrected and 
well-arranged abridgment. Mr. Orme laments 
the obstinacy of the author’s literary executor, 
which forbade the execution of this design. 
Few who know the book will agree with him. 
A strange chaos indeed it is. But Grainger 
has well said of the writer, that “ men of his 
size are not to be drawn in miniature.” Large 
as life, and finished to the most minute detail, 
his own portrait, from his own hand, exhibits 
to the curious in such things a delineation, of 
which they would not willingly spare a single 
stroke, and which would have lost all its force 
and freedom if reduced and varnished by any 
other limner, however practised, or however 
felicitous. There he stands, an intellectual 
giant as he was, playing with his quill as Her¬ 
cules with the distaff, his very sport a labour, 
under which any one but himself would have 
staggered. Towards the close of the first book 
occurs a passage, which, though often repub¬ 
lished, and familiar to most students of Eng¬ 
lish literature, must yet be noticed as the most 
impressive record in our own language, if not 
in any tongue, of the gradual ripening of a 
powerful mind, under the culture of incessant 
study, wide experience, and anxious self-ob¬ 
servation. Mental anatomy, conducted by a 
hand at once so delicate and so firm, and com¬ 
parisons so exquisitely just, between the im¬ 
pressions and impulses of youth, and the tran¬ 
quil conclusions of old age, bring his career 
of strife and trouble to a close of unexpected 
and welcome serenity. In the full maturity of 
such knowledge as is to be acquired on earth, 
of the mysteries of our mortal and of our im¬ 
mortal existence, the old man returns at last 
for repose to the elementary truths, the simple 
lessons, and the confiding affections of his 
childhood; and writes an unintended commen¬ 
tary, of unrivalled force and beauty, on the 
inspired declaration, that to become as little 
children is the indispensable, though arduous 
condition of attaining to true heavenly wisdom. 

To substitute for this self-portraiture, any 
other analysis of Baxter’s intellectual and 
moral character, would indeed be a vain at¬ 
tempt. If there be any defect or error of which 
he was unconscious, and which he therefore 
has not avowed, it was the combination of an 
undue reliance on his own powers of investi¬ 
gating truth, with an undue distrust in the 
result of his inquiries. He proposed to him¬ 
self, and executed, the task of exploring the 
whole circle of the moral sciences, logic, ethics, 
divinity, politics, and metaphysics, and this 
toil he accomplished amidst public employ¬ 
ments of ceaseless importunity, and bodily 
pains almost unintermitted. Intemperance 
never assumed a more venial form; but that 
this insatiate thirst for knowledge was indulged 
to a faulty excess, no reader of his life, or of 
his works, can doubt. In one of his most re¬ 
markable treatises “ On Falsely Pretended 
Knowledge,” the dangerous result of indulging 




75 


LIFE AND TIMES OF RICHARD BAXTER. 


this omnivorous appetite is peculiarly remark¬ 
able. Probabilities, the only objects of such 
studies, will at length become evanescent, or 
scarcely perceptible, when he who holds the 
scales refuses to adjust the balance, until satis¬ 
fied that he has laden each with every sugges¬ 
tion and every argument which can be derived 
from every author who has preceded him in 
the same inquiries. Yet more hopeless is the 
search for truth, when this adjustment, once 
made, is again to be verified as often as any 
new speculations are discovered; and when 
the very faculty of human understanding, and 
the laws oi reasoning, are themselves to be 
questioned and examined anew as frequently 
as doubts can be raised of their adaptation to 
their appointed ends. Busied with this im¬ 
mense apparatus, and applying it to this bound¬ 
less field of inquiry, Baxter would have been 
bewildered by his own efforts, and lost in the 
mazes of a universal skepticism, but for the 
ardent piety which possessed his soul, and the 
ever recurring expectation of approaching 
death, which dissipated his ontological dreams, 
and roused him to the active duties, and the 
instant realities of life. Even as it is, he has 
left behind him much, which, in direct opposi¬ 
tion to his own purposes, might cherish the 
belief that human existence was some strange 
cuimera, and human knowledge an illusion, 
did it not fortunately happen that he is te¬ 
dious in proportion as he is mystical. Had he 
possessed and employed the wit and gayety of 
Boyle, there are some of his writings to which 
a place must have been assigned in the Index 
Expur gat or ius of Protestantism. 

Amongst his contemporaries, Baxter appears 
to have been the object of general reverence, 
and of as general unpopularity. His temper 
was austere and irritable, his address ungra¬ 
cious and uncouth. While cordially admitting 
the merits of each rival sect, he concurred 
with none, but was the common censor and 
opponent of all. His own opinions on church 
government coincided with the later judgment, 
or, as it should rather be said, with the con¬ 
cessions of Archbishop Usher. They adjusted 
the whole of that interminable dispute to their 
mutual satisfaction at a conference which did 
not last above half an hour; for each of them 
was too devoutly intent on the great objects of 
Christianity to differ with each other very 
widely as to mere ritual observances. The 
contentions by which our forefathers were 
agitated on these subjects, have now happily 
subsided into a speculative and comparatively 
uninteresting debate. They produced their 
best, and perhaps their only desirable result, 
in diffusing through the Church, and amongst 
the people of England, an indestructible con¬ 
viction of the folly of attempting to coerce the 
human mind into a servitude to any system or 
profession of belief; or of endeavouring to 
produce amongst men any real uniformity of 


opinion on subjects beyond the cognisance of 
the bodily senses, and of daily observation. 
They have taught us all to acknowledge in 
practice, though some may yet deny in theory, 
that as long as men are permitted to avow the 
truth, the inherent diversities of their under¬ 
standings, and of their circumstances, must 
impel them to the acknowledgment of corres¬ 
ponding variations of judgment, on all ques¬ 
tions which touch the mysteries of the present 
or of the future life. If no man laboured more, 
or with less success, to induce mankind to 
think alike on these topics, no one ever ex¬ 
erted himself more zealously, or more effectu¬ 
ally, than did Richard Baxter, both by his life 
and his writings, to divert the world from those 
petty disputes which falsely assume the garb 
of religious zeal, to those eternal and momen¬ 
tous truths, in the knowledge, the love, and 
the practice of which, the essence of religion 
consists. 

One word respecting the edition of his works, 

, to which we referred in the outset. For the 
: reason already mentioned, we have stuck to 
I our long-revered folios, without reading so 
much as a page of their diminutive repre¬ 
sentatives, and can therefore report nothing 
about them. But after diligently and repeat¬ 
edly reading the two introductory volumes by 
Mr. Orme, we rejoice in the opportunity of 
i bearing testimony to the merits of a learned, 
modest, and laborious ■writer, who is now, 
however, beyond the reach of human praise or 
censure. He has done every thing for Baxter’s 
memory which could be accomplished by a 
skilful abridgment of his autobiography, and a 
careful analysis of the theological library of 
which he was the author; aided by an ac¬ 
quaintance with the theological literature of 
the seventeenth century, such as no man but 
himself has exhibited, and which it may safely 
be conjectured no other man possesses. Had 
Mr. Orme been a member of the Established 
Church, and had he chosen a topic more in 
harmony with the studies of that learned body, 
his literary abilities would have been far mare 
correctly estimated, and more w r idely cele¬ 
brated. We fear that they who dissent from 
her communion, and who are therefore ex¬ 
cluded from her universities and her literary 
circles, are not to expect for their writings the 
same toleration which is so firmly secured for 
their persons and their ministry. Let them 
not, however, be dejected. Let them take for 
examples those whom they have selected as 
teachers; and learning from Richard Baxter 
to live and to write, they will either achieve 
his celebrity, or will be content, as he was, to 
labour without any other recompense than the 
tranquillity of his own conscience, the love of 
the people among whom he dwelt, and the ap¬ 
probation of the Master to whom every hour 
of his life, and every page of his books, were 
alike devoted. 








76 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


PHYSICAL THEORY OP ANOTHER LIFE.* 


[Edinburgh Review, 1840.] 


In a series of volumes of later birth than 
that from which the author of the “Natural 
History of Enthusiasm” takes the title of his 
literary peerage, he has bent his strength to 
the task of revealing to itself the generation to 
which he belongs. A thankless office that of 
the censorship ! A formidable enterprise this, 
to rebuke the errors of a contentious age, 
while repelling the support of each of the con¬ 
tending parties! To appease the outraged 
self-complacency of mankind, such a monitor 
will be cited before a tribunal far more relent¬ 
less than his own. Heedless both of con¬ 
tumely and of neglect, he must pursue his 
labours in reliance on himself and on his 
cause; or, if fame be the reward to which he 
aspires, he must content himself with the anti¬ 
cipation of posthumous renown. It is not, 
however, easy for the aspirant himself to find 
the necessary aliment for such hopes. The 
writer of these works will therefore indulge us 
in a theory invented for the aid of his and our 
own imagination. Let it be supposed, that, 
instead of yet living to instruct the world, he 
was now engaged in bringing to tho test of 
experiment his own speculations as to the 
condition of mankind in the future state. He 
reappears amongst sublunary men under the 
auspices of some not unfriendly editor; who, 
however, being without any other sources of 
intelligence respecting his course of life and 
studies, has diligently searched his books for 
such intimations as may furnish the materials 
for a short “Introductory Notice” of him and 
of them. The compiler is one of those who 
prefer the positive to the conjectural style of 
recounting matters of fact; and has assumed 
the freedom of throwing into the form of un¬ 
qualified assertion the inferences he had gleaned 
from detached passages of the volumes he is 
about to republish. With the help of this 
slight and not very improbable hypothesis, the 
author of these works, while still remaining 
amongst us, may suppose himself to be read¬ 
ing, in some such lines as the following, the 
sentence which the critic of a future day will 
pass on his literary character. 

One of those seemingly motionless rivers 
which wind their way through the undulating 
surface of England, creeps round the outskirts 
of a long succession of buildings, half town, 
half village, where the monotony of the wat¬ 
tled cottage is relieved by the usual neigh¬ 
bourhood of structures of greater dignity;— 
the moated grange—the mansion-house, pierced 
by lines of high narrow windows—the square 
tower of the church,struggling through a copse 
of lime trees—the gray parsonage, where the 
conservative rector meditates his daily news¬ 
paper and his weekly discourse—the barn- 

* Physical Theory of Another Life. By the author 
of “Natural History of Enthusiasm.” 8vo. London, 
1839. 


fashioned meeting-house, coeval with the ac¬ 
cession of the House of Hanover—and near 
it the decent residence, in which, since that 
auspicious era, have dwelt the successive pas¬ 
tors of that wandering flock—fanning a gene¬ 
rous spirit of resistance to tyrants, now happily 
to be encountered only in imagination, or in 
the records of times long since passed away. 

Towards the close of the last century, a mild 
and venerable man ruled his household in that 
modest but not unornamented abode; for there 
might be seen the solemn portraits of the ori¬ 
ginal confessors of nonconformity, with many 
a relic commemorative of their sufferings and 
their worth. Contrasted with these were the 
lighter and varied embellishments which be¬ 
speak the presence of refined habits, female 
taste, and domestic concord. There also were 
drawn up, in deep files, the works and the bio¬ 
graphies of the Puritan divines, from Thomas 
Cartwright, the great antagonist of Whitgift, 
to Matthew Pool, who, in his Synopsis Critico « 
rum, vindicated the claims of the rejected mi¬ 
nisters to profound Biblical learning. This 
veteran battalion was flanked by a company 
of recruits drafted from the polite literature of 
a more frivolous age. Rich in these treasures, 
and in the happy family with whom he shared 
them, the good man would chide or smile away 
such clouds as checkered his habitual sere¬ 
nity, when those little nameless courtesies, so 
pleasantly interchanged between equals, were 
declined by the orthodox incumbent, or ac¬ 
cepted with elaborate condescension by the 
wealthy squire. The democratic sway of the 
ruling elders, supreme over the finances and 
the doctrines of the chapel, failed to draw an 
audible sigh from his resolute spirit, even when 
his more delicate sense was writhing under 
wounds imperceptible to their coarser vision. 
He had deliberately made his choice, and was 
content to pay the accustomed penalties. A 
sectarian in name, he was at heart a Catholic, 
generous enough to feel that the insolence of 
some of his neighbours, and the vulgarity of 
others, were rather the accidents of their posi¬ 
tion than the vices of their character. Vexa¬ 
tions such as these were beneath the regard of 
him who maintained in the village the sacred 
cause for which martyrs had sacrificed life 
with all its enjoyments; and who aspired to 
train up his son to the same honourable ser¬ 
vice, ill requited as it was by the glory or the 
riches of this transitory world. 

That hope, however, was not to be fulfilled. 
The youth had inherited his father’s magnani¬ 
mity, his profound devotion, his freedom of 
thought, and his thirst for knowledge. But he 
disclaimed the patrimony of his father’s eccle¬ 
siastical opinions. His was not one of those 
minds which adjust themselves to whatever 
mould early habits may have prepared for 
them. It was compounded of elements, be- 




PHYSICAL THEORY OF ANOTHER LIFE. 


77 


twnen which there are no apparent affinities, 
but the reverse; and which, for that reason, 
produce in their occasional and unfrequent 
combination, a character substantive, indivi¬ 
dual, and strongly discriminated from that of 
other men. Shrinking from the coarse fami¬ 
liarities of the world, he thirsted for the world’s 
applause—at once a very libertine in the un¬ 
fettered exercise of his own judgment, and a 
very worshipper of all legitimate authority— 
alternately bracing his nerves for theological 
strife, and dissolving them in romantic dreams 
—now buried in the depths of retirement, that 
he might plunge deeper still into the solitudes 
of his own nature ; and then revealing his dis¬ 
coveries in a style copied from the fashionable 
models of philosophical oratory;—the young 
man of whom we tell might be described as a 
sensitive plant grafted on a Norwegian pine, 
as a Spartan soldier enamoured of the Idylls 
of Theocritus, or as an anchorite studious of 
the precepts of the cosmetic earl of Chester¬ 
field. Nature and accident combined to pro¬ 
duce this contrast; integrity and truth gradually 
blended it into one harmonious, though singu¬ 
lar whole. The robust structure of his under¬ 
standing might have rendered him a rude 
dogmatist, if the delicate texture of his sensi¬ 
tive or spiritual frame had not forbidden every 
approach of arrogance. Exploring with in¬ 
trepid diligence the great questions debated 
amongst men regarding their internal interests, 
he recoiled with disgust from the unmannerly 
habits, the sordid passions, and the petty jea¬ 
lousies which proclaim, but too loudly, that 
while we dispute about the path to heaven, 
we are still treading the miry ways of this 
uncelestial world. Angelic abodes, and holy 
abstractions, and universal love, were the al¬ 
luring themes; but, handled as they were by 
polemics in the language of Dennis, and in the 
spirit of the Dunciad, our theological student 
was sometimes tempted to wish that the day 
on which he was initiated into the mysteries 
of the hornbook might be blotted from the ca¬ 
lendar. Thrown into early association with 
the depressed and less prosperous party in the 
ecclesiastical quarrels of his native land, the 
asperities of the contest presented themselves 
to his inquisitive and too susceptible eye, un¬ 
mitigated by the graceful and well-woven veil, 
beneath which sophistry and rancour can find 
a specious disguise when allied to rank and 
fortune and other social distinctions. Episco¬ 
pal charges and congregational pamphlets might 
vie with each other in bitterness and wrong; 
but there rested with the mitred disputant an 
unquestionable advantage in the grace and 
dignity and seeming composure with which 
he inflicted pain and quickened the appetite 
for revenge. By the unsullied moral sense of 
the young divine, either form of malevolence 
might be equally condemned ; but to his fasti¬ 
dious taste the ruder aspect which it bore 
amongst the advocates of dissent was by far 
the more offensive. 

Feelings painfully alive to the ungraceful 
and the homely in human character, invariably 
indicate an absence of the higher powers of 
imagination. To a great painter the counte¬ 
nance of no man is entirely devoid of beauty. 


To one worthy of the much prostituted name 
of poet, no forms of society arc without their 
interest and their charm.' But he whom the 
gods have not made poetical may be kind- 
hearted and wise, and even possessed by many 
a brilliant fancy, and by many a noble aspira¬ 
tion; and so it fared with this scion of a non¬ 
conformist race. From the coarseness of a 
spiritual democracy, from the parsimonious 
simplicity of their sacred edifices, from the 
obtrusive prominence of the leaders of their 
worship, and from their seeming isolation in 
the midst of the great Christian common¬ 
wealth, his thoughts turned to those more 
august communions, where the splendours of 
earth symbolize the hierarchies of heaven— 
where the successors in an unbroken lineage 
of apostles and martyrs are yet ministering at 
the altar—where that consecrated shrine echoes 
to the creeds and the supplications of the first 
converts to the faith—and where alone can 
flourish those arduous but unobtrusive vir¬ 
tues, of which an exact subordination of ranks 
forms the indispensable basis. Already half- 
diverted by such yearnings as these from his 
hereditary standard, his return to the embrace 
of the Episcopal Church v r as further aided by 
a morbid dislike, unworthy of his powerful in¬ 
tellect, of falling into common-place trains of 
thought or language. Educated in a body 
through which religious opinions and pious 
phrases but too lightly circulate, his instinc¬ 
tive dread of vulgarity led him into specula¬ 
tions where such associates would be shaken 
off, and to the use of a style such as was never 
employed by the dwellers in tabernacles. Of a 
nature the most unaffected, and irreproachably 
upright in the search of truth, he conducted 
his inquiries with such elaborate fineness of 
speech, and with such a fear of acquiescing in 
the bare creed of the school in which he had 
been bred, that his fellow-scholars must have 
formed an unjust estimate of their companion, 
had he not been withdrawn in early life to 
other associations, and to far different studies 
from those which they had pursued in com¬ 
mon. From his parental village, the future 
author was transferred to the remote and busy 
world in which our English youth are in¬ 
structed in the unjoyous science of special 
pleading, and trained for the dignities of the 
coif. 

By the unlearned in such matters, more dis¬ 
tinct evidence of this passage in his life may 
perhaps be demanded than the indications 
which his writings afford of a technical ac¬ 
quaintance with the law. But every “free and 
accepted brother” of the craft will recognise, 
in his frequent and curiously exact use of fo¬ 
rensic language, a confidence and a skill 
which belong only to the acolite in those stu¬ 
dies. That the Term Reports would be searched 
in vain for the specimens of his dialectic 
powers may, however, be readily believed 
Thurlow had as little to fear from the rivalry 
of the author of the “ Task,” as Lord Cotten- 
ham from that of the author of the “Natural 
History of Enthusiasm.” Westminster Hall 
is no theatre to be trodden by men of pensive 
spirits, delicate nerves, and high-wrought sen¬ 
sibilities. It is to England what the plain of 
o 2 





78 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS 


Elis was to Greece; and when a Pindar shall 
arise 10 celebrate the triumphs achieved there, 
he must sing of heroes who have rejoiced in 
the dust and sweat and turmoil of the strife, of 
men of thick skins and robust consciences, 
buoyant and fearless, prompt in resources, and 
unscrupulous in the use of them. Far other¬ 
wise the original of the portrait, so vividly yet 
so unconsciously self-drawn in these volumes. 
Every lineament tells of one incapable of lend¬ 
ing himself to any wilful sophistry—of a man 
rich both in knowledge and in power, though 
destitute of that quiet energy which in judicial 
tribunals, finds appropriate utterance in the 
simplest combinations of the plainest words— 
of a mind banqueting on contemplations most 
abhorrent from those of the peremptory paper. 
Not, however, “the worst of all his ills, the 
noisy bar.” Political strife shed a repulsive 
gloom over the other halls of the ancient pa¬ 
lace of Westminster. The whole tribe of party 
writers, diurnal and hebdomadal, overshadowed 
his path, like a flight of obscene birds, pol¬ 
luting by their touch and distracting by their 
dissonance those researches into the interests 
of the commonwealth and the duties of her 
chiefs, to which he desired to address a serene 
and unbiassed judgment. His heart assured, 
and his observation convinced him, that not 
merely the leaders, but even the subalterns of 
contending factions, were far wiser and better 
men than they appeared in those clever, reck¬ 
less, and malignant sketches thrown off from 
day to day by writers condemned to lives of 
ceaseless excitement, and excluded from the 
blessings of leisure and of self-communion. 

It is an old tale. Our author bade the town 
farewell, yet in a spirit far different from that 
of the injured Thales. He had no wrongs, real 
or imaginary, to resent, nor one sarcasm for the 
great city in which he had faintly wooed the 
smiles of fortune. With a mind as tranquil 
as the rural scenes to which he retired, he 
sought there leisure for many an unworldly 
and for some whimsical speculations, with a 
resting-place for the household and the library 
which divided his heart between them. 

A topographical catalogue of the books which 
a man has collected and arranged for his own 
delight, will lay open some of the recesses of 
his bosom as clearly as ever the character of 
courtier or cavalier was sketched by the pen 
of Clarendon. 

In the chamber where our recluse held his 
reign, the monarch of many a well-peopled 
province, giving audience in turn to each of 
his many-tongued. subjects, and exacting from 
them all tribute at his pleasure, might be seen, 
supreme in place and favour, a venerable copy 
of the Jewish and Christian scriptures. A 
troop of tall, sad-coloured folios, the deposito¬ 
ries of the devout studies and anxious self¬ 
searchings of the Puritan divines, was drawn 
up on shelves within reach of his outstretched 
arm. With but little additional effort it en¬ 
countered a tribe of more lofty discourse, bred 
in the sacred solitudes of Port-Royal, yet redo¬ 
lent of the passion of their native land for an 
imposing and graceful demeanour. Honest 
George Latimer, with a long line of Episcopal 
and Episcopalian successors, held a position 


a little ostentatiously prominent, accorded to 
them not merely from their own unrivalled 
worth and beauty, but also perhaps from the 
wish of the autocrat to avow their influence 
over him. But the main power of his state 
consisted in a race of ancient lineage and ob¬ 
solete tongues, beginning with Clement, Justin, 
and Irenreus, and so onward through the long 
series of Greek and Latin Fathers, eccclesias- 
tical historians, acts of councils and of saints, 
decretals, missals, and liturgies, all in turn 
casting their transient lights and their deep 
shadows over the checkered fortunes of the 
Christian Church. Brought within the pre¬ 
cincts of this wide dominion, Homer, JE schy- 
lus, Dante, Shakspeare, and the humbler par¬ 
takers of their inspiration, awaited at some 
distance the occasional summons of this mighty 
potentate. But in their reverend aspect might 
be perceived something, which confessed that 
they were not amongst his chosen and habitual 
companions. Court favour here, as elsewhere, 
seemed to be capricious in proportion as it 
was diffusive; and writers on physiology, 
astronomy, plants, insects, birds, and fishes, 
shared with metaphysicians, moralists, and the 
writers of civil history, the hours occasionally 
withdrawn by their master from more serious 
intercourse with his apostolic, patristic, papal, 
and reformed counsellors. In short, it was one 
of those rooms which he who can securely 
possess, quietly enjoy, and wisely use, may, in 
sober truth, pity the owners of Versailles and 
the Escurial. 

Wise men read books that they may learn 
to read themselves, and for this purpose quit 
their libraries for the open air. The heath, the 
forest, or the river-side, is the true academy. 
There the student, with no kind neighbour to 
dissipate his thoughts, and with no importu¬ 
nate author to chain them down, casts them 
into such forms of soliloquy or dialogue, of 
verse or prose, as best suits the humour or 
the duties of the passing day. This peripatetic 
discipline is best observed under cover of an 
angling rod, a bill hook, or a gun; for then 
may not the vicar or the major, without an 
evident breach of privilege, detain you on the 
county-rate question, nor may the gentler voice 
of wife or daughter upbraid you with the sad 
list of your unrequited visits'? Besides, your 
country philosopher flatters himself that in 
hooking a trout, or flushing a pheasant, his 
eye is as true and his hand as steady as those 
of the squire ; and from this amiable weakness 
the historian of enthusiasm would seem not to 
have been quite exempt. Emerging from his 
library as one resolved to bring home some 
score head of game, his stout purposes would 
gradually die away as he reached the brook, 
whose windings were oddly associated in his 
mind with various theories by which the world 
was one day to be enlightened, and with many 
half-conceived chapters of essays yet to be 
written. To meditate on the advantages of 
meditation, was on these occasions one of his 
chosen exercises; and, in the ornate style to 
which he was wedded, he would muse on those 
in whom “ the intellectual life is quick in all 
its parts.” “It is,” he would say, “as when 
the waters of a lake are left to deposit their 



79 


PHYSICAL THEORY OF ANOTHER LIFE. 


feculence and to become pure as the ether 
itself, so that they not on.y reflect from their 
surface the splendours of heaven, but allow 
the curious eye to gaze delighted upon the 
decorated grottoes and sparkling caverns of 
the depth beneath. Or might we say, that the 
ground of the human heart is thickly fraught 
with seeds which never germinate under either 
a wintry or a too fervent sky; but let the dew 
corne gently on the ground, and let mild suns 
warm it, and let it be guarded against external 
rudeness, and we shall see spring up the gayety 
and fragrance of a garden. The Eden of human 
nature has indeed long been trampled down 
and desolated and storms waste it continually; 
nevertheless the soil is still rich with the germs 
of its pristine beauty, the colours of paradise 
are sleeping in the clods, and a little favour, a 
little protection, a little culture, shall show 
what once was there. Or, if we look at the 
human spirit in its relation to futurity, it must 
be acknowledged that as an immortality of joy 
is its proper destiny, so it is moved by instincts 
which are the true prognostics of eternal life. 
Earthly passions quench these fore-scents of 
happiness, but meditation fosters them; and 
the life of the religious recluse is a delicious 
anticipation of pleasures that shall have no 
end.” 

Strange that one who justly claimed a high 
station among the bold and original thinkers 
of his times, should have woven this tissue of 
brave words, and should have decked his most 
elaborate inquiries with countless posies as 
garish as these ! But the key to the riddle has 
already been given. Could notes have been 
struck less in unison with the Cantilena of the 
meeting-house 1 Could any have been touched 
better fitted to charm those dear but dangerous 
judges, who in winter evenings listen to a re¬ 
vered and familiar voice reciting passages, 
which still glow in their and in his own too 
partial eyes with all the freshness of creation! 
Has not the immutable.decree gone forth, that 
though he whose home is secure from the in¬ 
vasions of the world may write excellently 
upon home education, he must watch jealously 
against home criticism! And yet an English 
gentleman of our railway age, who had devoted 
himself to an anchorite life, might with some 
reason insist that the fruits he had gathered for 
the use of other secluded households could be 
brought to no better test than the good or ill- 
liking of the companions of his own retreat. 
To betake himself, as our author was wont to 
do, “ to some valley of silence,” and there, as 
he expressed it, to “ accumulate a rich trea¬ 
sure of undefined sentiments and indistinct 
conceptions,” was to indulge in a diet at once 
intoxicating and unnutritious. The juices of 
his mental frame would have been altogether 
attenuated by thus feeding on bright unutter¬ 
able day-dreams about the microcosm within 
him ; or the unembodied spirits who surrounded 
him; or the physical structure of the paradise 
he hoped to regain; or any thing else, so long 
as it was but foreign to the pursuits, the cares, 
aud the interests of the world in which he 
lived. But then would succeed the cheerful 
fireside talk, which compelled him to become 
intelligible to others and to himself. What Plato 


meant in many of his discourses, no one. with 
reverence be it spoken, has ever very clearly 
discovered; but who would have found cou¬ 
rage to make the attempt, but for those bright 
fictions which bring the reader into a collo¬ 
quial party, where much of the gaseous matter 
which must otherwise have exhaled into an 
impalpable mist, is fixed and brought within 
the range of human perception by the necessi¬ 
ties of the dialogue. Even so, our modern 
speculator, after soaring “ into that wide and 
uncircumscribed sphere wherein spirits excur¬ 
sive and philosophically modest take their 
range,” and gathering there, “if not certain 
and irrefragable conclusions, at least scattered 
particles of wisdom, -which he more highly 
esteemed than all the stamped coinage where¬ 
of dogmatism makes its boast,” would make 
his way home again, and explain himself to 
an audience which Socrates might have envied. 
There, condescending to enter “within that 
bounded circle of things which may be mea¬ 
sured on all sides and categorically spoken of,” 
he would exhibit the inbred vigour of his un¬ 
derstanding, quickened and guided by the native 
kindness of his heart. Had he not been a hus¬ 
band and a father, he would have been a mys¬ 
tic. His interior life would have degenerated 
into one protracted and unsubstantial vision, if 
his house had not echoed to a concert of } r oung 
voices executing all manner of sprightly varia¬ 
tions on the key-notes sounded by his own. 
His “free converse with truth and reason in 
the sanctuary of his own bosom,” would have 
been held in that incommunicable'language 
which reason was never yet able to under 
stand, if his free converse with his boys and 
girls had not habitually admonished him that 
the sublime in words may be easily combined 
with the beautiful in sentences, without the 
slightest advantage to the author of the spell 
or to any one else. After musing on the com¬ 
promise of antagonist principles throughout 
universal nature, he was thus taught the neces¬ 
sity for reconciling the hostile propensities of 
his own bosom—the one beckoning him to 
tread the dizzy confines which separate the 
transcendental from the nonsensical, the other 
inviting him to drag the river with his sons, or 
to read L’Allegro to his daughters. Peace was 
concluded on better terms for the father than 
the visionary. Each passing year found him 
a plainer-spoken man, more alive to sublunary 
thoughts, and more engaged in active duties. 
Yet to the last, like some of the great painters 
of his day, he eschewed transparent lights and 
clear outlines, and loved to delineate objects 
through a haze. 

There is a great want of a philosophical 
essay on the choice, the benefits, and the treat¬ 
ment of the hobby horses. It would form a 
connecting link between the Libraries of Use¬ 
ful and of Entertaining Knowledge. Scarcely a 
man (the made-up and artificial man alone 
excepted) who could not be laid under contri 
bution for such a work. Our learned and 
amiable recluse might have a -whole chap¬ 
ter to himself. When it was not a field-day 
with him, and he had no exercises in divi¬ 
nity to perform, he would descend from the 
great horse, and amble about to his heart’t 







80 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


content on a favourite pad, which, however, it 
was his whim to dress in the housings of his 
tall charger, and to train to the same paces. 
To extract the marrow of church history was 
his appointed duty—to construct schemes of 
physiology his habitual pastime. Uncle Toby 
never threw up his intrenchments, nor “my 
father” his theories with greater spirit. He 
worked out, at least on paper, a complete plan 
of education, founded on a diligent survey of 
the functions of the brain; and composed an 
elaborate system, exhibiting the future condi¬ 
tion of man when disencumbered of those vis¬ 
cous and muscular integuments, which in the 
present life serve as a kind of sheath to pro¬ 
tect the sentient mind within, from the intensi¬ 
ties of delight or of pain to which, without such 
a shelter, it would be exposed. Too -wise ever 
to become frivolous or vapid, his wisdom was 
not of that exquisite mould, which exhibits 
itself in unimpaired lustre, in a state of gayety 
and relaxation. Whatever might be his theme, 
his march was still the same, stately, studied, 
and wearisome. Ilis theological and his cere¬ 
bral inquiries were all conducted in the same 
sonorous language. Period rolled after period 
in measured cadence, page answered page in 
icientific harmony. This paragraph challenged 
applause for its melodious swell, that for its 
skilful complexity, the next for the protracted 
•imile with which it brought some abstruse 
discussion to a picturesque and graceful close. 
Any of them would have furnished Dr. Blair 
with illustrations of his now-forgotten rules for 
writing well; and exceedingly fine writing it 
was. But, after all, one’s hobbj r might as well 
be put into a waltz as into the grand menage. 
It is only in his own easy natural shuffling 
gait that the animal shows to advantage. So 
kind-hearted, however, and so full of matter 
was our rider, that the most fastidious critic 
could hardly think twice of such a trifle. 

The lines had fallen to him in pleasant 
places, and his gratitude to Providence ex¬ 
pressed itself in depicting his goodly heritage 
for the delight and the emulation of others. 
Not, indeed, that he laid bare the sacred re¬ 
cesses of his home to the vulgar gaze, by pub¬ 
lishing journals, confessions, or an autobio¬ 
graphy. He would just as soon have surren¬ 
dered his body to the surgeons for dissection 
as an anatomie vivante. But reversing the 
familiar method of conveying moral precepts 
under the veil of narrative, he told uncon¬ 
sciously in a didactic form, a story as beauti¬ 
ful as it was true. An English country house 
was the scene: the dramatis personas parents, 
enjoying competency, health, and leisure, very 
learned and amiable withal, and wise above 
measure, with a troop of boys and girls as in¬ 
telligent and docile as they were gay: the plot 
or fable being made up of the late, though 
complete development of their various mental 
powers. 

That such a house did exist, and that be¬ 
neath its tranquil shelter many a youth and 
many a maid were trained to improve and to 
adorn the land which gave them birth, no 
reader of the book called “ Home Education,” 
will for a moment doubt; or at least none who 
has ever invented a theory or revolved an 


apophthegm while watching the play or lis¬ 
tening to the prattle of his own children. But 
that, north or south of Trent, such another is 
to be found must be disbelieved, until a com¬ 
mission of married men, of six years’ standing 
at the least, shall have ascertained and report¬ 
ed the fact. What with managing constituents 
and turnpike trusts, writing sermons and pre¬ 
scriptions, meeting the hounds to-day and the 
quarter-sessions to-morrow, an English coun¬ 
try gentleman, whether clerical or laic, who 
should undertake the late development of the 
“Ideality,” and the “Conceptive Faculty,” and 
the “Sense of Analogy,” of his children, though 
he should address himself to “ the intuitive 
faculties” alone, and those “ gently stimulated 
by pleasurable emotions,” would, in a myriad 
of cases to one, end in something very differ¬ 
ent from the promised result of “ putting their 
minds into a condition of intellectual opu¬ 
lence.” Adam was earning the bread of his 
sons by the sweat of his brow, while they were 
learning to keep sheep, and to till the ground, 
and such has ever since been the condition of 
his descendants. Here and there may perhaps 
be found an Eden such as our author inha¬ 
bited and described, where exempt from the 
cares of earth, and cultivating a correspond¬ 
ence between the human and the Divine mind, 
fathers such as he was are training their off¬ 
spring to apprehend truth, to impart truth, and 
to discover truth. A lovely scene it was, and 
drawn with all the earnest pathos of paternal 
love. But as the Belvidere Apollo differs from 
an honest sportsman of our days, or the God¬ 
frey of Tasso from an officer of her majesty’s 
Life-Guards, even such w’as the difference be¬ 
tween our rural philosopher and the ten thou¬ 
sand respectable gentlemen over the walls of 
whose country mansions fertile vines have 
crept, and whose tables are thickly set with 
olive branches: though amongst them may be 
found double first-class men, and here and there 
a senior wrangler. 

Thus flowed on a life which kings might 
have envied, sages approved, and poets sung, 
if in these later days those illustrious person¬ 
ages had not become very chary of such fa¬ 
vours. Things looked as if the village sculp¬ 
tor and versifier would be the sole guardian 
of his posthumous fame, and he known to 
posterity only as one of those best of fathers 
and of men, over whose remains the yew tree 
in the neighbouring church-yard stood senti¬ 
nel. Such a catastrophe would have suited 
well with his quiet scorn of terrestrial glory, 
but ill with those high-wrought graces of style 
in -which he was accustomed to express it. 
Religion and philosophy may diminish the 
danger, but hardly the strength, of the univer¬ 
sal craving for the esteem of our fellow-mor¬ 
tals. He knew and had reflected much; and 
it was his duty to impart it. He had disco¬ 
vered many current errors, and it behooved 
him to expose them. His flow of language 
was choice and copious, and philanthropy 
itself suggested that he should awaken all its 
melodies. If renown would follow, if a frivo¬ 
lous world would admire her monitor, if his 
labours of love should win for him the regard 
of the discerning few, or even the applause of 




PHYSICAL THEORY OF ANOTHER LIFE. 


81 


the unthinking many, why, he was too benevo¬ 
lent, too honest, and too wise, either to despise 
the recompense or to affect to depreciate it; 
and thus he became an author 1 ! 

To “ exhibit at one view the several princi¬ 
pal forms of spurious or corrupted religion,” 
had for many years been his chosen task. 
But art is long, and life short; and the stately 
edifice pictured in his imagination, was aban¬ 
doned for a range of structures of humbler 
form, though better suited to the taste and 
habits of his age. An Essay on Enthusiasm 
prepared the way for another on Fanaticism, 
to which were destined to succeed treatises on 
Superstition, on Credulity, on the Corruption 
of Morals, and on Skepticism. Of this series, 
the four last never saw the light; the place as¬ 
signed in the programme to Superstition hav¬ 
ing been usurped by Spiritual Despotism, and 
by a succession of tracts drawn up in battle 
array against those of the Oxford Catholics, 
under the title of “Primitive Christianity.” 
Thus was produced an incomplete course of 
lectures on Ecclesiastical Nosology—a science 
which, however inviting, could not exercise an 
undisputed influence over one who lived in 
such scenes, and who was blessed with such 
associates as we have mentioned. 

Nothing more easy than the transition from 
the spiritual diseases of the world to the 
mental health of his own nursery—from the 
contemplation of souls infected by the taint of 
their mortal prison-house, to a meditation on 
immortal spirits, whose corporeal shrines shall 
eternally enhance their purest'joys and partici¬ 
pate in the discharge of their most exalted 
duties. As when a Teutonic commentator, a 
man egregious and most celebrated, long ha¬ 
rassed with the arrangement of some intract¬ 
able chorus, escaping at length from its 
anapaestic or ditrochsean bondage into an ex¬ 
cursus on the dress and ornamen'ts of the 
Grecian stage, revels and lingers there, re¬ 
joicing in his freedom, and recruits his strength 
for new metrical labours; so our author, 
(whose Homeric style, it may be perceived, is 
contagious,) averting his thoughts from the 
sad legends of human weakness, which fill so 
large a space in the history of the Christian 
Church, would take refuge in the paradise of 
home, or in musings on that eternal rest of 
which earth has no other type so vivid or so 
endearing. On his “Natural History of En¬ 
thusiasm,” faithful critics (ourselves among 
the number) pronounced a sentence, which, 
if not altogether flattering to the self-esteem of 
the historian, may yet have contributed to that 
improvement in the art of authorship which 
is to be distinctly traced in his later books. 

Time and space would fail us, should we 
now endeavour to estimate all his labours in 
that branch of moral or religious science 
which he undertook to cultivate. But the 
book called “ Religious Despotism,” demands 
at least a passing notice. Incomparably the 
most vigorous offspring of his brain, it has 
had, like some portionless younger brother, to 
struggle on against unmerited neglect; the 
whole patrimony of praise having been seized 
upon by the book on Enthusiasm, in virtue of 
the law of literary primogeniture. An ill- 
11 


chosen title, the want of lucid order, and a 
grandiloquence here more than ever out of 
place, may partly account .for this. Be the 
world, however, assured, that among the works 
on ecclesiastical polity which it has of late re¬ 
ceived with acclamation, there is not one so 
worthy of being reverently praised and in¬ 
wardly digested. 

The divisions “ now so much exasperated 
that exist amongst us, on questions belonging to 
the exterior forms and the profession of reli¬ 
gion, are of a kind that affect the Christian 
with inexpressible grief, the patriot with shame 
and dismay, and the statesman with hopeless 
perplexity.” So says our author, and so in 
turn say all the disputants. But he alone, as 
far as our reading extends, has breathed this 
complaint in the true spirit of Christian kind¬ 
ness, united to a catholic breadth of capacity 
and of knowledge. 

What are the legitimate foundations, and 
what the proper limits of sacerdotal authority? 
—questions proposed and answered by many 
a polemic, religious and political; and some¬ 
times, though very rarely, discussed in the 
spirit of a philosophy more pure and elevated 
than is usually imbibed by such controversial¬ 
ists. How this debate was managed by a man 
of robust sense, profound learning, and still 
deeper piety, who, though too upright and too 
fastidious to surrender himself to the extrava¬ 
gances of any party, had a wide personal ac¬ 
quaintance with the modes of thinking and 
with the habits of all, would be well worth the 
knowing, even if that knowledge did not con¬ 
tribute to our more immediate object of deline¬ 
ating his literary character. Ample, however, 
must be the space in which to make a com¬ 
plete exhibition, or even an exact epitome of 
his doctrines. It will be enough to indicate 
such of them as he seems to have regarded 
with peculiar attachment. 

Religion, an indestrustible element of oui 
nature, may exist as a system of superstitious 
terrors; in which case the abject humiliation 
of the proselyte will give the measure of the 
authority of the priest. Or it may exist as a 
genuine revelation from Heaven; but even so, 
the fluctuating fashions of the world will exalt 
or depress the powers of the ministers of the 
purest faith. The Greek patriarch, after the 
manner of his nation, scaled such heights of 
authority as subtlety and eloquence could 
command for him. The successors of Peter 
triumphed by force of the same audacious 
energy which had before given empire to the 
Caesars. Boasting of her liberties, the Gallican 
Church was content to lose every thing hormis 
I’honneur. 

In England, ecclesiastical despotism had to 
encounter the inflexible spirit of our barons 
and burgesses; while Demos, the arch-tyrant 
of the United States, supreme over all rulers, 
temporal and spiritual, lays alike on president 
and priest his inexorable command to progress 
—urging them both onward in the same im¬ 
patient career. But, be the influence of national 
character on sacerdotal dominion what it may, 
the state must either set limits to the power of 
the church or must bow to her supremacy. 
Hands which grasp the keys, will, if unfettered. 





82 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WHITINGS. 


soon usurp the sceptre and the sword. Religion 
unites men in societies, resting on a basis more 
profound, and yet agitated by excitements 
more intense and frequent, than any other. 
Between a theocracy administered by the 
sacred order, and a church at once restrained 
and protected by law, there is no middle resting- 
place. “Alliance” is but a lofty euphemism 
for allegiance. 

Competency and independence will still be 
the desire and the aim of the human heart, 
whether it beats under the corslet, the ermine, 
or the surplice. To refuse to ecclesiastics 
the gratification of this wish, is as imprudent 
as it is vain. While pointing the way to 
heaven, they are still our fellow-travellers in 
the ways of earth. Abandon them to the 
spontaneous support of their disciples, and 
there is an end of the mental composure ne¬ 
cessary for their arduous duties, and there is 
an inlet to flatteries and to frauds, the most re r 
pugnant to their hallowed character. On such 
a system imposts are laid on the poor and the 
feeble-minded, and evaded by the wealthy and 
the supercilious. For the indigent no provision 
is made. All the more permanent and catholic 
schemes of Christian philanthropy are un¬ 
heeded; and the greatest of all social interests 
is intrusted to mere impulses to which no 
rational lawgiver would confide the least. 
History records the result of this experiment, 
as tried not in the narrow form of the modern 
congregational system, but on the broader 
principle of thus creating funds to support the 
pastors of a province or a state. Constantine 
may have been the nursing father, but he was 
also the resolute reformer of the Church. Her 
primitive sanctity was impaired, not by the 
privileges he conferred, but by the rapacious 
habits on which the exercise of that imperial 
bounty entitled and enabled him to impose 
some restraint. Of the alliance which he ne¬ 
gotiated, the essential condition was, that the 
Christian hierarchy should be defended by 
law in the possession of the wealth assigned 
to them, and should be prohibited by law from 
augmenting it by unworthy means. 

Men uniting in religious fellowship must 
also be united by some scheme of internal 
organization. These societies must be made 
up of the teachers and the taught, of the 
governors and the governed. They should be 
rather families, in which there is much to be 
learned, to be borne, and to be done, than clubs 
held together by a revocable will for the en¬ 
joyment in common of equal privileges. 

Absolute monarchy would be the most per¬ 
fect scheme of civil, and absolute prelacy of 
ecclesiastical government, if kings and prelates 
were absolutely wise and just. Synods, par¬ 
liaments, franchises, constitutional rights, in¬ 
estimable as securities against social evils, are 
yet but proofs of that degeneracy which, in 
certain respects, they contribute to enhance. 
They impede the growth and the expansion of 
some of the noblest of our moral sentiments; 
such as loyalty, veneration, humility, and 
mutual confidence. Now, in these and similar 
feelings, the very essence of religion consists. 
Whatever ecclesiastical regimen most con¬ 
duces to their development, is that which a 


Christian society would spontaneously assume 
Episcopal rule is the “primitive form” in which 
pure Christianity appears among men: inde¬ 
pendency that Vhich it acquires when men 
have learned to distrust each other. Patri 
archal command and filial duty wait on that 
perfect love which casteth out fear; self-asser¬ 
tion and the impatience of controLon that rest¬ 
less fear which casts out love. Government 
and the graduated subordination of ranks 
would have been a divine ordinance, even if 
it had not been expressly and in terms pro¬ 
mulgated as such. It may be read in the in¬ 
spired volume; but it may be discerned almost 
as clearly in the natural distinctions of man¬ 
kind. God himself has consecrated some to 
the royal, some to the episcopal, and some to 
the priestly office; and whether the world will 
hear or will forbear, that high commission is 
still extant in unimpaired force,and may never 
be disobeyed with impunity. 

As in the domestic, so in the ecclesiastical 
household, the higher functions ought to be 
undertaken by those to whom that eminence is 
due, on the ground of superior endowments, 
whether natural or acquired. How to adjust 
the claims of rival candidates, is the great 
practical difficulty. Who shall decide which 
members of the church shall be raised to the 
clerical office, and which shall constitute the 
laity. Apostolical example, in this case, affords 
no rule for the guidance of later ages. When 
as yet congregations were to be formed, the 
choice of teachers inevitably belonged to the 
first promulgatobs of the faith. Neither will 
the sacred text yield an explicit answer to this 
inquiry. Nothing more studiously indefinite 
than the language of Paul, of Peter, and of 
John, regarding the external institutes of Chris¬ 
tianity. Such outward forms they decidedly 
left in an inchoate and plastic state, to be 
moulded to the varying exigencies of mankind 
in different political societies. 

From their writings, and from the practice 
of their immediate successors, may, however, 
be deduced one general principle. It is, that 
in the government of the Church the monarchi¬ 
cal and the popular elements should be com¬ 
bined and harmonized. Yet to divorce them 
from each other is the common aim, though by 
opposite methods, both of those whose boast is 
their apostolical succession, and of those who 
exult in the freedom of religious democracy. 
Here both parties are untrue to their own 
cardinal maxims. The antiquarian divines 
explore their records in*vain for a pretext for 
excluding the laity from a voice in deliberation, 
in discipline, and in the election of their bishops, 
priests, and deacons. On this subject they 
therefore decline, and shrink from their favour¬ 
ite and customary appeal to tradition. The 
pure biblicists search the inspired canon with 
equally ill success, for one word to show that 
the pastor should be the mere stipendiary and 
dependent of his flock, subsisting on their 
bounty, subject to their will, and removable at 
their pleasure. They therefore refuse in this 
discussion to admit “ the Bible, and the Bible 
alone” as their complete and all-sufficient guide 
of conduct. Sacerdotal power and popular 
control, which, by a well adjusted equipoise. 





83 


PHYSICAL THEORY OF ANOTHER LIFE. 


should mutually sustain the spiritual edifice, 
are thus, by their ill-judging partisans, arrayed 
as antagonist, or rather as hostile forces. In 
one direction the march of despotism, in 
another the progress of anarchy, is advanced 
by those to whom both should be equally ab¬ 
horrent, as being equally opposed to their com¬ 
mon faith. 

How copious the eloquence with which the 
author of “ Spiritual Despotism” would have 
disclaimed all responsibility for the opinions 
thus ascribed to him, and for the language in 
which they have been expressed! With what 
exuberant artifices of style would he have in¬ 
sisted that the mature results of the patient 
studies of his life, are not to be understood by 
any less laborious method than that of reading 
and meditating the volume in which he has 
himseli recorded them ! No protest could be 
more reasonable. Of such a book a fair esti¬ 
mate cannot be formed from the hasty sketch 
of an inconsiderable fragment, selected not as 
being more impressive than the rest, but it 
may be as indicating doctrines for which, as 
very nearly coinciding with his own, the ab- 
brevialor might desire to win at least a tran¬ 
sient notice. Gratitude to him who has brought 
to the birth thoughts with which the mind has 
been long, though silently teeming, may over¬ 
flow in unmeasured praise. Little, however, 
is hazarded in announcing this work as the 
most original, comprehensive, and profound 
contribution which any living writer in our 
own country has made to the science of eccle¬ 
siastical polity. They whose delight is in the 
transcendental and the obscure, who pine for 
theories which elude their grasp, and believe 
that to strain is to expand the mind, will judge 
otherwise. For once our author must submit 
to the reproach, perhaps the unwelcome re¬ 
proach, of being perfectly intelligible. Draw¬ 
ing outlines of history with a hand as bold and 
free as that of Guizot, conversant with princi¬ 
ples as recondite as those of Coleridge, and 
animated by the same chaste and fervent piety 
which hallows the speculations of Mr. Glad¬ 
stone, his was the further praise of bringing to 
the encounter, with the loftiest abstractions, 
that athletic good sense which disdains to en¬ 
large itself by looming through a fog. Master, 
as he was of the chiar ’ oscuro, the love of truth 
was too strong in him for the love of art. Ad¬ 
dressing mankind on a subject of urgent and 
solemn interest, he rose so far above the fash¬ 
ions of his age, as to shun the region over 
which sublimity and nonsense hold divided 
rule ; remembering, perhaps, that it has never 
been frequented by any of the master spirits 
of the world; and that, even amongst men di¬ 
vinely inspired, he who was at once the great¬ 
est and the most deeply learned, had preferred 
to speak five words to edification than to speak 
ten thousand words in an unknown tongue. 
To grapple with -principles of the widest span, 
without requiring so much as a momentary 
repose in the lap of mysticism, is an admira¬ 
ble power. To refuse on such an occasion, the 
but too familiar and ready aid of that narcotic, 
is a real, though an unobtrusive virtue. 

As the unwonted self-denial of thin potations 
will sometimes appear to him who has made 


it to deserve the reward of a generous cup of 
sack, so he who had thus submitted himself to 
the penance of tracing, in distinct and legible 
characters, the progress of spiritual despotism, 
his task accomplished, soared away into other 
contemplations more agreeable to himself at 
least, because more abstruse, which he re¬ 
vealed to the lower world under the enigmati¬ 
cal title of “Saturday Evening.” He sought 
relief and found it, when ordinary mortals find 
little else than lassitude; for, in the full sense 
of that profound expression, he was a man 
spiritually minded. His assent to Christianity 
was no faint admission that the balance of 
conflicting arguments inclined in favour of 
that belief. It was a conviction rooted in the 
inmost recesses of his mind; the germinating 
principle of the devout thoughts which grew 
spontaneously in that well cultured and fertile 
soil. To measure "the heights and the depths 
of the truths revealed or intimated in the in¬ 
spired volume, was at once the solace and the 
habitual labour of his life. 

From the strife of politicians, the wonders 
of art, and the controversies of the learned, he 
turned away to ponder on the hopes and pros¬ 
pects of the Christian Church, on her lapse 
from original purity, on the fellowship and iso¬ 
lation of her members, the limits of revealed 
knowledge, the dissolution and the perpetuity 
of our nature, and the modes of our future ex¬ 
istence. Incapable of acquiescing tamely in 
any of the dogmatic systems of divinity, (all 
alike definite, cold, sterile, and earth-born,) he 
aspired to reach that upper region which the 
pure light visits, and whence alone it is re¬ 
flected in all its purity. There he proposed to 
himself and handled problems of which Butler 
might have surmised the solution, and Milton 
evolved the latent glories. But he was attempt¬ 
ing to 'Scale eminences where the mightiest 
become conscious of their weakness, and the 
boldest imagination is taught the penury of 
her resources. To throw some unsteady and 
precarious lights on such themes, should limit 
the ambition, as it will unavoidably terminate 
the success, of all intellects but those of the 
most exalted order. Yet how abstain altogether 
from such endeavours to explore things un¬ 
dreamt of in our popular theology, when the 
ear has been trained to hear, however indis¬ 
tinctly, the undertones of the Divine voice, and 
the heart ta understand, however imperfectly, 
the inarticulate language of the Divine govern¬ 
ment 1 Blessed in no vulgar degree with such 
perceptions, our author applied himself with 
reverence, and, with freedom of thought, to 
topics which, when so examined, can never 
be unfruitful, though the fruits may often be 
unripe, and to the great majority unpalatable. 
Take, as an example, the following abridgment 
of a chapter, entitled, “The State of Seclu 
sion 

From our narrow survey of the affairs of 
mankind, no principle of universal morals can 
be deduced, except as a matter of doubtful 
speculation and still recurring controversy, 
triumphant to-day, to be discarded to-morrow 
Were it otherwise, the slumber of the sou. 
with all its attendant dreams and fantasies, 
must be broken. Our probationary state re- 





84 


•STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS 


WRITINGS. 



quires that we should exist only as the inhabi¬ 
tants of a narrow area, shut out from the gene¬ 
ral assembly of intelligent beings, and denied 
all access to those vehement and irresistible 
persuasions by which, with their comprehen¬ 
sive knowledge of the universal laws of the 
divine economy, they would constrain us to 
obedience. Within the walls of our prison- 
house we are condemned to grope in vain, if 
so we may discover the permanent tendencies 
and the ultimate issues of things. The great 
axioms of eternal virtue are rather obscured 
than illustrated by the complexity, the insig¬ 
nificance, and the obtrusive glare of those 
occurrences which make up national and indi¬ 
vidual history. Each man is straightened in 
his sphere of observation and of thought. His 
experience is incalculably small when com¬ 
pared to that of the whole human family, of 
which he is for the time*a member. Of the 
events of preceding ages, he may catch some 
faint notices; of those of the ages to come, he 
lives and dies in profound ignorance. Between 
those who are entering and those who are 
about to quit this stage of existence, there are 
such distinctions of physical temperament as 
greatly intercept the tradition of knowledge 
from parents to their children. Geographical 
position, the antipathy of races, discordance 
of tastes, and differences of speech, contribute 
still further to segregate communities and their 
component parts. The intervention of a river, 
or a chain of mountains, will reduce to mute 
signs and gestures the language by which man 
holds intercourse with his fellows. Narrowing 
his pursuits and thoughts within a single path, 
the petty cares of life render him ignorant of 
what is passing beyond his daily walk, and 
unobservant of the far larger proportion of 
what occurs within it. So apparently inextri¬ 
cable is the confusion, and so many the seem¬ 
ing anomalies of all that falls under his per¬ 
sonal notice, that man's existence assumes the 
semblance rather of a game of chance than of 
a system throughout which is to be traced the 
average result of established rules. So feeble 
is the faculty of generalization in most—so 
minute, urgent, and uniform, and yet so nume¬ 
rous the affairs in which they are engaged; 
such are the contaminations, and such the 
ridicule of life; so extravagant the folly in one 
direction, and so abject the misery in another, 
that the prospect open to any one of us, during 
his confinement in this sublunary state, is 
every where hedged round within narrow pre¬ 
cincts, and bounded by a horizon as indistinct 
as it is near. 

Yet from our prison-house we look out on 
populous regions of illimitable space, though 
forbidden to converse with their inhabitants. 
We perceive that, beyond the limits of our 
own planet, the same law of seclusion prevails. 
Creation does not form one continuous sur¬ 
face over which beings of the same order 
might pursue an unbroken path, but is made 
up of globes suspended in thin space at incal¬ 
culable distances. While neighbouring worlds 
are thus estranged from each other, the vast¬ 
ness of the universe is exhibited to every per¬ 
cipient being within its range. Thus the iso¬ 
lation of man is but the development on earth 


of one great law by which all nature is per¬ 
vaded. Created intelligences are every where 
kept apart from that communion with other 
ranks of being, whose greater comprehensive¬ 
ness of knowledge would destroy the balance 
of conflicting motives, and reduce the rational 
will to a state of unresisting subjection. Man 
is isolated from preceding generations, and 
from all but a very inconsiderable number of 
his own, because the comprehensive expe¬ 
rience which he might otherwise gain of the 
course of human affairs, would in the same 
manner be destructive of his liberty of choice. 
Each is left to gather from his separate expe¬ 
rience moral rules at once unobtrusive, and 
yet capable of sufficient proof. Wisdom does 
not raise her voice in the streets; she calmly 
offers instruction to the prudent, but does not 
force it on the thoughtless. The division of 
created minds into distinct communities, and 
the various methods by which the members of 
the same community are separated from each 
other, are parts of that general ordinance or 
system by which a certain reserve is imposed 
on wisdom and on virtue. Things eternal 
and universal are unseen; things partial and 
temporal are alone submitted to our observa¬ 
tion. 

Such, divested of the embellishments with 
which they fell from his own hand, are the 
meditations to which the historian of Enthusi¬ 
asm has devoted one of his “ Saturday Even¬ 
ings.” It is a loss they can ill afford. Win¬ 
nowed a little further, this splendid essay (for 
such in the original it really is) might, without 
the escape of any of its essences, be exhibited 
in the form of one or two simple and familiar 
truths:—as thus : 

Moral probation is incompatible with a dis¬ 
tinct and certain foresight of all the remote 
tendencies, and of all the ultimate results of 
our conduct. If the transient delights which 
allure us, and the overwhelming evils which 
follow in their train, were both at once revealed 
to the mental vision in the vivid colours and 
hard outlines of the naked reality, neither vice 
nor virtue could any longer exist among men. 
As probationers, we must live in the state of 
seclusion, that is, we must be cut off from those 
sources of information, which, if we had access 
to them, would prevent even a momentary 
equipoise between the present and the future— 
between those desires which crave immediate 
indulgence, and those which point to a distant 
but greater good. One of the causes by which 
the influx of such knowledge is impeded, is the 
insular position of our globe in the shoreless 
ocean of space; and as this physical isolation 
of worlds seems to pervade the celestial sys¬ 
tem, we may conjecture that “seclusion is a 
law of the universe,” and that throughout the 
stellar regions imperfect knowledge is made 
conducive to the exercise and the improvement 
of virtue. There is but one Being to whom 
we are taught to ascribe complete and inflexi¬ 
ble rectitude, because there is but one to whom 
we can attribute absolute omniscience.. 

Inconsiderable as is the amount of genuine ore 
employed in this essay, and in many other parts 
of the collection of which it forms no unfavour¬ 
able specimen, it would be difficult to refer to 






85 


PHYSICAL THEORY 

a more apt illustration of the ductility and the 
biilhanceot which moral truth is susceptible. 

hat if Selden or Pascal would have extracted 
into a page or twoot apophthegms the essential 
oils of all these discourses; and what though 
the capacity to concentrate thought be a nobler 
gift than the art to diffuse it; yet may this in¬ 
terior power exist in a state of rare and admir¬ 
able excellence. Genuine wisdom has many 
tongues and many aspects, and employs each 
in turn to express and to promote that love of 
mankind which, under all her external forms, 
is still her animating spirit. Yet it must be 
confessed, that she so habitually delights in 
the simplest garb, that when, as in these 
sabbatical essays, she decks herself out in the 
literary fashions of the day, one may hope to 
be forgiven lor being unaware of her presence. 
They are infinitely more rich in knowledge 
and in power than the generation of the author 
would confess; and yet was not that generation 
to blame] Under draperies adjusted with 
such obtrusive skill, and of so elaborate a tex¬ 
ture, men are seldom accustomed to find real 
beauty, and are therefore but little disposed to 
search for it. 

When a biographer has conducted his hero 
to the tomb, he usually leaves him there. To 
the list of excepted cases must be added that 
of the author of “A Physical Theory of a Fu¬ 
ture Life.” In form a speculative treatise, it 
may be considered as substantially a narrative 
of his existence beyond the confines of earth, 
in those scenes which most men occasionally 
anticipate, and which many have attempted to 
describe; some from the ambition for immortal 
fame, and some impelled by the cravings for 
immortal felicity. From the shelves of his 
well-filled library, sages and poets were sum¬ 
moned to contribute to the formation of this 
work. First, and before all, were consulted 
the writers of the sacred volume ; of whom it 
may with the strictest truth be said, that they 
have established the triumph of good sense 
over the mere dreams of excited fancy. Of 
such dreams, none possessed a firmer hold on 
the Italian and Greek philosophers and their 
disciples, than that after death man was to pass 
into a state of pure incorporeity, and to be ab¬ 
sorbed by the great mundane soul. Very dif¬ 
ferent the teaching of the writers of the New 
Testament. They transferred from this world 
to the next the great truth—that human happi¬ 
ness requires not only that the mind be sound, 
but that it be lodged in a sound body. Irenceus 
and Tertullian informed our theorist that such 
was also the creed of the immediate successors 
of the apostles. Origen taught him, that to ex¬ 
ist as a spirit wholly detached and separate 
from matter, is the incommunicable attribute 
of the omnipresent Deity; and instructed him 
to understand the luciform body of the Platonic 
system as identical with the spiritual body of 
the Christian revelation. 

From the same great master he learned that, 
without such an instrumentality, minds created 
and subordinate must be cut off from all com¬ 
merce with external things, and become nothing 
more than so many inert, insulated, and con¬ 
templative entities. With these great fathers 
of the Church he found the rest of that vener- 


OF ANOTHER LIFE. 

able college in harmony-—copious in their in¬ 
quiries respecting the nature of good and bad 
demons—assigning to the angelic host the 
nearest possible resemblance, and to the evil 
spirits the utmost possible dissimilarity, to the 
defecated intelligences of the Aristotelic learn¬ 
ing; the one impassive to all sensual delights, 
the other inhaling with an unholy relish the 
savoury fumes of heathen sacrifices, but both 
clad with material integuments, subtilized to 
an imponderable and indefinite tenuity. Their 
volumes, especially, if we remember right!)', 
those of Augustine, revealed to him the farther 
secret of the manner in which spirits inhabit¬ 
ing these ethereal vehicles hold intercourse 
with each other; and even explained the shapes 
in which they manifest their presence to those 
exquisite organs of sensation by which alone 
they are perceptible. Cook, or La Perouse, 
never drew a plainer chart of their discoveries, 
than that which was thus laid open to our author 
of the regions of the blessed. Cuvier never 
examined the osseous structure of an ante¬ 
diluvian quadruped more closely, than the 
mental and physical constitution of the im¬ 
mortals was thus analyzed by some of those 
who in ancient times aspired one day to join 
that exalted company. 

Other provinces of our author’s literary do¬ 
minions were yet to be explored. One con¬ 
temptuous glance was given to the Koran, and 
to the paradise copied, as it might seem, by the 
prophet, from the Aphroditan temples of Paphos 
or Idalia. Homer exhibited to him the illustri¬ 
ous dead as so many victims of the inexorable 
fates against which they had contended so 
bravely on earth, and as agitated by passions 
which it was no longer permitted them to 
gratify. His great imitator discovered to the 
student, Elysian fields over which satiety 
reigned in eternal and undisputed sway, and 
which the poet himself advantageously ex¬ 
changed, twelve centuries afterwards, for the 
outskirts of the “ Inferno” with an occasional 
voyage of discovery through those gloomy 
mansions. The awful magican who placed 
him there lost much of his own inspiration, 
when, quitting the guidance of Virgil for that 
of Beatrice, he traversed in her company the 
seven heavens, and listened in the sun to the 
lectures of Thomas Aquinas, or received from 
the saints congregated in the form of an eagle 
in the planet Jupiter, a metaphysical comment 
on the mysteries of the divine decrees. 

From the poets, our author next turned to 
the theological philosophers of his own and 
other countries. In Cudworth and Brucker he 
found the doctrines of the schools of ancient 
and of modern Europe in more perfect sym¬ 
metry, and in greater clearness than in the 
works of the sages and schoolmen themselves ; 
but cold as the latitudinarianism of the first, 
and dry as the antiquarian lore of the second. 
At length his hand rested on two volumes in 
which the post-sepulchral condition of man is 
delineated with a beauty and eloquence to 
which he rendered a willing, although a silent 
homage. One of those was the treatise of 
Thomas Burnett —De Statu Mortuorum et Re¬ 
surgent ium —the other, that book on the “Light 
of Nature,” in which Abraham Tucker tra¬ 
il 








8G 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WETTINGS. 


verses the world to come in his atomic or 
vehicular state. Burnett, it may be supposed, 
best knew his own strength and weakness, and 
judged rightly in choosing scientific or criti¬ 
cal subjects, and in discussing them in a dead 
language. But to those who read his works it 
must ever remain a mystery that he could sub¬ 
ject himself to such fetters, instead of yielding 
to the inspiration which was ever at hand to 
sublimate into impassioned poetry whatever ex¬ 
act knowledge or whatever learned inquiries 
might happen to engage his thoughts. Tucker, 
on the other hand, was a matter of fact person; 
happy beyond all men in the power of illus¬ 
trating the obscure by the familiar; but happier 
still in the most benevolent and cheerful tem¬ 
per, and in a style which beautifully reflects 
the constitutional gayety and kindness of his 
heart. There is a charm even in his want of 
method, and in the very clumsiness of his 
paragraphs; for each sentence bears him testi¬ 
mony that he is too intent on his object to 
think of any thing else, and that to teach con¬ 
troversialists to understand and to love each 
other was the single end for which he lived 
and wrote. Of his metaphysical speculations, 
the most original and curious is the Inquiry 
into the Nature and the Operation of Motives. 
But his excellence consists in the brightness 
and in the variety of the lights he has thrown 
round the whole circle of those topics over 
which natural and revealed religion exercise a 
common and indivisible dominion. To rid 
them of mere logomachies, to show how much 
the fiercest disputants may be unconsciously 
agreed, to prove how greatly Christianity is 
misrepresented by many of her opponents, and 
misunderstood by many of her friends—and, 
without ever assuming the preacher’s office, to 
explain the depths of the great Christian canon 
of mutual love as the universal substratum of all 
moral truth,—this is the duty which he has un¬ 
dertaken, and which he executes, often success¬ 
fully, and always with such courage, diligence, 
and vivacity, and with so unbroken a sunshine 
of a placid and playful temper, as to render 
the “ Light of Nature” one of the most attrac¬ 
tive books in our language, both to those who 
read to be themselves instructed on these ques¬ 
tions, and to those who read with a view of im¬ 
parting such instruction to others. 

So judged Paley in the last generation ; and 
such is manifestly the opinion of Archbishop 
Whately, and of Bishop Coppleston, with many 
other writers of our own. Amongst the many 
who have drawn at this fountain, the latest 
would appear to be the author of “The Physi¬ 
cal Theory of a Future Life.” Whether he in 
fact availed himself of the sources of informa¬ 
tion which we have indicated, or any other of 
the countless books which treat on the myste¬ 
ries of the world to which we are all passing, 
is, however a fact on which it is impossible to 
advance beyond conjecture. The old and obso¬ 
lete fashion of commencing a voyage of disco¬ 
very to any terra incognita, by a retrospect of 
the success or failure of former adventurers, 
and the still more ancient practice of fencing 
round the page with references and quotations, 
were not without their use. It would, how¬ 
ever, be captious to complain of the discon¬ 


tinuance, in a single case, of customs so gene¬ 
rally laid aside; or to arraign an author as 
making an unjust pretension to the praise of 
originality, merely because he does not in 
terms disavow it. If in this new theory there 
is little to be found in substance with which 
those who are inquisitive about such matters 
were not already familiar, there is at least a 
systematic completeness and symmetry, in this 
scheme of a future life, unrivalled even in 
Abraham Tucker’s vision. In order to dis¬ 
close to mankind the prospect which thus 
awaits them, it will be necessary to convert 
our author’s didactics into the form of a frag¬ 
ment of his posthumous autobiography—a 
freedom, for the pardon of which the necessity 
of the case may be urged; since it seems im¬ 
possible by any other method to convey any 
adequate conception of a career which, daz¬ 
zling as it is in itself, is still further obscured 
by the brilliant polish of the abstract phraseo¬ 
logy in which it is described by him by whom, 
in imagination at least, it was run. He may, 
then, be supposed to have revealed the inci¬ 
dents of his immortal existence to the asso¬ 
ciates of his mortal being, in some such terms 
as the following: 

One universal bewilderment of thought, one 
passing agony, and all was still. I had emerged 
from the confines of life, and yet I lived. Time, 
place, and sensation were extinct. Memory 
had lost her office, and the activity of my rea¬ 
soning powers was suspended. Apart from 
every other being, and entombed in the soli¬ 
tude of my own nature, all my sentient and 
mental faculties were absorbed and concen¬ 
trated in one intense perception of self-con¬ 
sciousness. Before me lay expanded, as in a 
vast panorama, the entire course of my mortal 
life. I was at once the actor and the spectator 
of the whole eventful scene; every thought as 
distinct, every word as articulate, and every 
incident as fresh as at the moment of their 
birth. The enigmas of my existence were 
solved. That material and intellectual me¬ 
chanism of which, for threescore years and 
ten, I had been the subject, was laid bare, with 
all the mutual dependencies of the countless 
events, great and trivial, of my sublunary 
days. Grasping at length the threads of that 
vast labyrinth, I perceived that they had all 
been woven by the same Divine Artificer. At 
each step of the way by which I had come, I 
now traced the intervention of an ever watch¬ 
ful Providence. Complicated and perplexing 
as the condition of human life had formerly 
appeared to me, I at length discovered the 
great ultimate object to which each movement 
of that intricate apparatus had been designed 
to minister. I saw that the whole had been 
one harmonious and comprehensive scheme 
for purifying the affections of my nature, and 
invigorating them for nobler and more arduous 
exercises. I had gone down to Hades, and 
Deity was there. On earth his existence had 
been demonstrated. Here it was felt by a con¬ 
sciousness intuitive and irresistible. A pri¬ 
soner in the flesh, I had been wont to adore 
the majesty of the Creator. A disembodied 
spirit, I was awake to the conviction that he 
exists as the perennial source of happiness, 



PHYSICAL THEORY OF ANOTHER LIFE. 


87 


which, concentrated in his own nature, is 
thence diffused throughout the universe, al¬ 
though in degrees immeasurably distant from 
each other, and according to laws unsearch¬ 
able by any finite understanding. Thus im¬ 
bibing knowledge of myself and of Deity, and 
alive only to the emotions inspired by this 
ever-present spectacle, I became the passive 
recipient of influences instinct with a delight 
so tranquil, and with a peace so unbroken, 
that weariness, satiety, and the desire for 
change appeared to have departed from me 
for ever. 

Change, however, awaited me. So slight 
and imperfect had been the alliance between 
my disembodied spirit and the world of matter, 
that, destitute of all sensation, I had lost all 
measure of time, and knew not whether ages 
had revolved, or but a moment had passed 
away during my is'olated state of being. Heir 
to ten thousand infirmities, the body I had 
tenanted on earth had returned to the dust, 
there to be dissolved and recompounded into 
other forms and new substances. Yet the 
seminal principle of that mortal frame had 
adhered to me; and at the appointed season 
there brooded over it from on high a repro¬ 
ductive and plastic influence. Fearfully and 
wonderfully as I had been made when a deni¬ 
zen of the world, the chemical affinities, and 
the complex organization of my animal struc¬ 
ture, had borne the impress of decay, of a tran¬ 
sitory state, and of powers restricted in their 
free exercise. Passing all comprehension as 
had been the wisdom with which it was adapted 
to the purposes of my sublunary being, those 
purposes had been ephemeral, and circum¬ 
scribed within precincts which now seemed to 
me scarcely wider than those within which 
the emmet plies her daily task. In the ca¬ 
reer which was now opening to me, I re¬ 
quired a far different instrumentality to give 
scope to my new faculties, and to accomplish 
the ends to which I had learned to aspire. 
Emancipated from the petty cares and the 
mean pursuits in which, during the period of 
my humanity, I had been immersed, I now in¬ 
habited and informed a spiritual body, not dis¬ 
similar in outward semblance to that which I 
had bequeathed to the worms, but uniform in 
texture, homogeneous in every part, and drawn 
from elements blended harmoniously together, 
into one simple, pure, and uncompounded 
whole. Into such perfect unison had my men¬ 
tal and my corporeal natufe been drawn, that 
it was not without difficulty I admitted the be¬ 
lief that I was once again clothed with a mate¬ 
rial integument. Experience was soon to 
convince me that such an association was 
indispensable to the use and to the enlarge¬ 
ment of my intellectual and moral powers. 

Emerging from the region of separate spirits 
into my next scene of activity and social in¬ 
tercourse, I found myself an inhabitant of 
the great luminary, around which Mercury 
and his more distant satellites eternally re¬ 
volve. In all their unmitigated radiance were 
floating around me, those effulgent beams of 
light and heat which so faintly visit the ob¬ 
scure and distant planets. Everlasting day, 
the intense glories of an endless summer noon, 


rested on the numbers without number of in¬ 
telligent and sentient creatures who shared 
with me my new abode. Incorruptible, exempt 
from lassitude, and undesirous of repose, they 
imbibed energy from rays which in the twink¬ 
ling of an eye would have dissipated into thin 
vapour the world and all that it inherits. On 
that opaque globe, the principles which sustain, 
and those which destroy life had been engaged 
within me in a constant but unequal conflict. 
The quickening spirit on earth, though conti¬ 
nually recruited by rest and sleep, had at 
length yielded to the still-recurring assaults of 
her more potent adversaries. Here the vital 
powers had no foes to encounter, and de¬ 
manded no respite from their ceaseless occu¬ 
pation. In the world below, from man, the 
universal sovereign, to the animalcula who 
people a drop of turbid water, I had seen all 
animated things sustaining themselves by the 
mutual extermination of each other. In the 
solar sphere I found all pursuing their ap¬ 
pointed course of duty or enjoyment, in im¬ 
mortal youth and undecaying vigour. Death 
had found no entrance, life demanded no re¬ 
newal. 

I anticipated the results of the observations 
which I gradually learned to make of the dif¬ 
ference between solar and planetary existence; 
for on my entrance into this untried state of 
being, my thoughts were long riveted to the 
change which I had myself undergone. While 
incarcerated in my tenement of clay, I had 
given law to my nerves, muscles, and tendons; 
but they had in turn imposed restraints on me 
against which it had been vain to struggle. 
My corporeal mechanism had moved in prompt 
obedience to each successive mandate of my 
mind; but so fragile were the materials of 
which it was wrought, that, yielding to inexor¬ 
able necessity, my will had repressed in¬ 
numerable desires which, if matured into ab¬ 
solute volitions, would have rent asunder that 
frail apparatus. I had relaxed the grasp, and 
abandoned the chase, and thrown aside the 
uplifted weapon, as often as my overstrained 
limbs admonished me that their cords would 
give way beneath any increased impetus. And 
when the living power within me had subjected 
my fibres to the highest pressure which they 
could safely endure, the arrangement, and the 
relative position of my joints and muscles, had 
impeded all my movements, except in some 
circumscribed and unalterable directions. But 
my spiritual body, incapable of waste or of 
fracture, and responsive at every point to the 
impact of the indwelling mind, advanced, re¬ 
ceded, rose or fell, in prompt obedience to each 
new volition, with a rapidity unimpeded, though 
not unlimited, by the gravitating influence of 
the mighty orb over the surface of which I 
passed. At one time I soared as with the 
wings of eagles, and at another penetrated the 
abysses of the deep. The docile and inde¬ 
structible instrument of my will could outstrip 
the flight of the swiftest arrow, or rend the 
knotted oak, or shiver the primeval rocks; and 
then, contracting its efforts, could weave the 
threads of the gossamer in looms too subtle 
and evanescent for the touch of the delica 
Ariel. 




88 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


While on earth I had, like Milton, bewailed 
that constitution of my frame which admitting 
to knowledge of visible objects only at one en¬ 
trance, forbade me to converse with them ex¬ 
cept through the medium of a single nerve, and 
within the narrow limits of the retina. Had 
the poet’s wish been granted, and if, departing 
from her benignant parsimony, nature had ex¬ 
posed his sensorium to the full influx of the 
excitements of which it was inherently suscep¬ 
tible, that insufferable glare would either have 
annihilated the percipient faculty, or would 
have quickened it to agonies unimagined even 
by his daring fancy. Under the shelter of that 
material structure which at once admitted and 
mitigated the light, I had in my mortal state 
been accustomed to point my telescope to the 
heavens; and, while measuring the curve de¬ 
scribed round their common centre by stars 
which to the unaided eye were not even dis¬ 
united, I had felt how infinitely far the latent 
capacities of my soul for corresponding w r ith 
the aspect of the exterior world transcended 
such powers as could be developed within me, 
while confined to the inadequate organs of 
vision afforded me by nature or by art. An 
immortal, I quaffed at my pleasure the streams 
of knowledge and of observation for which be¬ 
fore I had thus panted in vain. I could now 
scan and explore at large the whole physical 
creation. At my will I could call my visual 
powers into action to the utmost range of their 
susceptibility; for in my new body I possessed 
the properties of every different lens in every 
possible variety of combination—expanding, 
dissecting, and refracting at any required angle 
the beams which radiated from the various 
substances around me, it brought me intelli¬ 
gence of the forms, the colours, and the move¬ 
ments of them all. Assisted by this optical 
incarnation, I could survey the luminary on 
which I dwelt, the globes whose orbits were 
concentric there, and, though less distinctly, 
the other solar spheres which glowed in the 
firmament above me. Not more clearly had I 
deciphered during my sojourn on earth the 
shapes and hues of the various beings by which 
it is replenished, than I now discerned the as¬ 
pect and the movements of the countless spe¬ 
cies, animate and inanimate, with which the 
prodigal munificence of creative will has peo¬ 
pled the various planetary regions. 

Nor was it through the intervention of light 
merely, that my altered corporeity brought me 
into communication with the works of the Di¬ 
vine Architect. It attracted and combined for 
my study or my delight, all the vibratory move¬ 
ments, and all the gustatory and pungent 
emanations, by which the sense is aroused and 
gratified. Celestial harmony floated around 
me, and I breathed odours such as exhaled 
from Eden on the fresh dawn of the world’s 
nativity. In that world, chained down by the 
coarse elements of flesh and blood, I had 
caught some transient glimpses of exterior 
things, through the five portals which opened— 
shall I say into my fortress or my prison-house? 
From the glorious mansion which my soul now 
inhabited, pervious to myself at every point, 
though impregnable to every hostile or unwel¬ 
come aggression,! surveyed the things around 


me in aspects till now unimagined. I did not 
merely see, and hear, taste, smell, and fe>el, but 
I exercised senses for which the languages of 
earth have no names, and received intimations 
of properties and conditions of matter unutter¬ 
able in human discourse. Employing this in¬ 
strument of universal sensation, the inner forms 
of nature presented themselves before me as 
vividly as her exterior types. Thus entering 
her secret laboratories, I was present at the 
composition and the blending together of those 
plastic energies of which mundane philosophy 
is’content to register some few of the superfi¬ 
cial results. Each new disclosure afforded 
me a wider and still lengthening measure of 
that unfathomable wisdom and power, with the 
more sublime emanations of which I was thus 
becoming conversant. Such was the flexibility 
of my spiritualized organs, that at my bidding 
they could absolutely exclude every influence 
from without, leaving me to enjoy the luxuries 
of meditation in profound and unassailable 
solitude. 

While thus I passed along the solar regions, 
and made endless accessions of knowledge, I 
was at first alarmed lest my mind should have 
been crushed beneath the weight of her own 
conquests, and the whole should be merged in 
one chaotic assemblage of confused recollec¬ 
tions. From this danger I was rescued by 
another change in my animal economy. Dur¬ 
ing my planetary existence, the structure and 
the health of my brain had exercised a de¬ 
spotic authority over my intellectual powers. 
Then my mind laboured ineffectually over her 
most welcome tasks, if accident or indigestion 
relaxed, distended, or compressed my cerebral 
vessels. For the time, the tools with which 
she wrought were deprived of their brightness 
and their edge. At such seasons, (and they 
were frequent,) the records of past sensations, 
and of the thoughts associated with them, be¬ 
came illegible in my memory, or could be read 
there only in disjointed fragments. An acid 
on his stomach would have rendered vain the 
boast of Ccesar, that he could address each of 
his legionaries by name. Even when all my 
pulses were beating with regularity and vigour, 
the best I could accomplish was to grope back¬ 
ward through my store of accumulated know¬ 
ledge, holding by a single thread, to which my 
attention was confined, and the loss of which 
defeated all my efforts. 

How different the tablets on which my ob¬ 
servations of the past were recorded in my 
spiritual body! Unconscious of fatigue, in¬ 
capable of decay, and undisturbed by any of 
those innumerable processes essential to the 
conservation of mortal life, it enabled me to 
inscribe in indelible lines, as on some out¬ 
stretched map, each successive perception, and 
every thought to which it had given birth. At 
my pleasure, I could unroll and contemplate 
the entire chart of my past being. I could ren¬ 
der myself as absolutely conscious of the for¬ 
mer, as of the present operations of my mind, 
and at one retrospective glance could trace 
back to their various fountains all the tributary 
streams which combined to swell the current 
of my immediate contemplations. Gliding 
over the various provinces of the solar world, 



89 


PHYSICAL THEORY 

and gathering in each new treasures of infor¬ 
mation, I deposited them, all beyond the reach 
ot the great spoiler, time, in this ample store¬ 
house of a plenary memory. With the increase 
of my intellectual hoard, my cravings for such 
wealth continually augmented. It was an 
avarice which no gains could satiate, and to 
the indulgence of which imagination itself 
could assign no limit. 

I should, however, have became the victim 
ot my own avidity for knowledge, if my ideas 
had still obeyed those laws of association to 
which, in my telluric state, they had been sub¬ 
ject. 1 hen it behooved my reason to exercise 
a severe and watchful government. When her 
control was relaxed, mv thoughts would break 
loose from all legitimate restraint. They ar¬ 
ranged themselves into strange groups and 
fantastic combinations, and established with 
each other such alliances as whim, caprice, or 
accident suggested. These, once made, were 
indissoluble. They asserted their power but 
too often, in resistance to the sternest mandates 
of my judgment and my will. But in times of 
debility, of disease, or of sleep, my ideas would 
combine into heterogeneous masses, seething 
and mingling together, like the ingredients of 
some witch’s caldron, assembled by her in¬ 
cantations to work out some still more potent 
spell. Over the whole of this intoxicating 
confusion presided carnality, in all her nerv¬ 
ous, cerebral, vascular, and other forms, and 
working by means of all her digestive, secre¬ 
tory, and assimilating processes. 

No longer the inmate of a tremulous and 
sordid tabernacle of flesh, but inhabiting a 
shrine pure and enduring as her own nature, 
my soul was now rescued from this ignoble 
thraldom. Accident, appetite, lassitude, the 
heat and fumes of my animal laboratory, had 
ceased to disturb the supremacy of reason. 
Instead of congregating as an undisciplined 
host, my ideas, as in some stately procession, 
followed each the other in meet order and 
predetermined sequence—their march unob¬ 
structed by any suggestions or desires origi¬ 
nating in my sensuous frame. I had become, 
not the passive recipient of thought, but the 
unquestioned sovereign of my own mental 
operations. The material organs, by the aid 
of which I now wrought them out, obeyed a 
law like that on which depends the involun¬ 
tary movements of the heart and arteries, unat¬ 
tended by any conscious effort, and productive 
of no fatigue. Every increment of knowledge 
spontaneously assumed in my memory its 
proper place and relative position; and the 
whole of my intellectual resources fell into 
connected chains of argument or illustration, 
which I could traverse at pleasure from end to 
end, still finding the mutual dependence and 
adhesion of each successive link unbroken. 

To contemplate any truth in all the relations in 
which it stands to every other truth, is to possess 
the attribute of omniscience; but, in proportion 
as any created intelligence can combine toge¬ 
ther her ideas in their various species, genera, 
classes, and orders, in the same degree is dimi¬ 
nished the distance from the Supreme Mind, 
immeasurable and infinite as the intervening 
gulf must ever remain. On earth I had been 


OF ANOTHER LIFE. 

compelled, by the feebleness of my cerebral 
and nervous economy, to render my studies 
almost exclusively analytical. There, I had 
toiled to disencumber every question of what¬ 
ever might obscure the view of the isolated 
point proposed as the end of my inquiries. 
Morals apart from physics, art disunited from 
logic, the science of numbers and of space 
detached from the exercise of the imaginative 
power, even theology itself divorced from the 
devout aspirations to which she tends, had 
each in turn engaged my earnest pursuit. But 
to ascend those heights from which they could 
be contemplated as parts of one harmonious 
whole—to seize and to blend together the ana¬ 
logies pervading the works of poets and mathe¬ 
maticians, of naturalists and divines—this was 
an attempt which convinced me how indisso¬ 
luble were the fetters which riveted my soul 
to her sluggish associate. Set free from this 
.bondage, and supplied with an instrument of 
sensation which kept pace with her own inhe¬ 
rent activity, she found and desired no repose. 
Solar time is measured by the revolutions of 
the planetary orbs, and from the commence¬ 
ment to the completion of his career through 
the firmament. Uranus still found me engaged 
in some unbroken contemplation. During that 
interval I had completed some vast synthesis, 
in which were at once combined and distin¬ 
guished all the various aspects under which 
some province of knowledge had disclosed 
itself to my view. In the nether world, high 
discourse had been held on the connexion of 
the sciences; but now I discovered the mutual 
influence, the interaction, and the simultaneous 
workings of their different laws. I no longer 
cultivated the exact sciences as a separate do¬ 
main, but the most severe physical truth was 
revealed to me in union with the richest hues 
of ideal beauty, with the perfection of the imi¬ 
tative arts, with the pure abstractions of meta¬ 
physical thought, with narratives both historical 
and romantic, with the precepts of universal 
morals, and the mysteries of the Divine govern¬ 
ment. Ontology—vain-glorious word as used 
among men—the knowledge of universal being 
as distinct from species, and of species as har¬ 
monized in universal being, was the study 
which engaged the time and rewarded the la¬ 
bours of immortal minds animating spiritual 
bodies. 

Let not those who boast themselves in logic, 
Aristotelian or Baconian, assume that their 
puny architecture of syllogistic or inductive 
reasoning affords the rules by which the soul, 
rescued from the hindrances of a carnal cor¬ 
poreity, erects for herself edifices of know¬ 
ledge, immovable in their base, beautiful in 
their proportions, and towering in splendid 
domes and pinnacles to the skies. 

To Newton and to Pascal the theories of the 
vulgar geometry -were as instinctly obvious as 
the preliminary axioms on which they rest. 
While yet an infant, Mozart was possessed of 
all those complex harmonies which a life of 
patient study scarcely reveals to inferior mas¬ 
ters of his art. In my planetary existence, I 
had rejoiced in my habitual aptitude for phy¬ 
siology and historical researches, nor had 1 
regretted the years of ceaseless toil devoted tu 
h 2 





90 


STEPHEN'S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


them. Now. I discovered that in myself, as in 
the great men I have mentioned, the apprehen¬ 
siveness of truth depended far more on the 
animal than the mental framework. Quick 
and vigorous in high bodily health, and slug¬ 
gish and inert under the pressure of corporeal 
debility, I learned that logic, experiment, and 
calculation, had been but so many crutches to 
assist the movements of the halt and feeble; 
and that, with a physical instrumentality which 
study could not exhaust nor disease assail, in¬ 
tuition took the place of reasoning. I became 
rather the conscious witness than the agent 
of the process by which consequences were 
evolved from the premises brought under my 
notice. 

In the society of which I had become a 
member, as in mundane communities, dis¬ 
course was amongst the chief springs both of 
improvement and delight. So curiously fash¬ 
ioned was the integument within which my 
mind was enveloped, that, after the manner of 
an eyelid, it could either exclude the access of 
any external excitement, creating within me 
an absolute and impregnable solitude, or lay 
open to the immediate survey of an associate 
any thought or combination of thoughts which 
I desired to impart to him. I had acquired 
two distinct languages, one of visible signs, 
the other of audible symbols. The first was 
analogous to the mute dialogue which is car¬ 
ried on in pantomime, by gesture and the vary¬ 
ing expressions of the countenance; though, 
unlike such discourse, it was exempt from all 
conjectural and ambiguous meanings. As in 
a camera obscura, my corporeal organs re¬ 
flected the workings of the informing spirit; so 
that, like the ancient Peruvians, I could con¬ 
verse as by a series of pictures, produced and 
shifted with instantaneous'rapidity. This mode 
of communication served my turn when I had 
any occurrences to relate, or any question to 
discuss, of which sensuous objects formed the 
basis. But when phenomena purely psycho¬ 
logical, destitute of all types in the material 
creation, were to be conveyed to a companion, 
I had audible symbols, by which every intel¬ 
lectual conception, and each fluctuating state 
of moral sentiment might be expressed as dis¬ 
tinctly as geometrical diagrams express the 
corresponding ideas to which they are allied. 
By the intermixture of pictorial and symboli¬ 
cal speech, I could thus render myself intelli¬ 
gible throughout the whole range and compass 
of my mental operations, and could give utter¬ 
ance to all those subtle refinements of thought 
or of sensation, which, even amongst those 
w r ho spoke the vernacular tongue of Plato, 
must, from the want of fit and determinate 
indications have either died away in silence, 
or have been exhaled in some mystic and un¬ 
intelligible jargon. Whatever distinctness of 
expression the pencil or vibratory chords ena¬ 
bled Raphael or Handel to give to their sub¬ 
lime but otherwise ineffectual conceptions, I 
had thus the power to impart to each modifi¬ 
cation of thought, and to every shade of feel¬ 
ing. Verbal controversies, sophistry, and all 
the other “idols of the cavern,” had disap¬ 
peared. Philosophy and her legitimate issue, 
wisdom, piety, and love, were cultivated and 


treasured up by each member of the great 
solar family, not as a private hoard, to minister 
only to his own uses, but as a fund universally 
communicable, and still augmenting by con¬ 
stant interchange. 

It is difficult, or impossible, to speak intelli¬ 
gibly, in the language of men, of the delights 
or of the duties of the state of being into which 
I had thus entered. Borne along in the vehicle 
of my spiritual body, I dreaded no fatigue, and 
•was deterred by no danger in the discharge of 
the most arduous enterprises. Aspects of the 
creation, hidden from me while garmented in 
the gross elements of flesh and blood, now 
burst on my perception as light visits him 
who, in mature life, for the first time acquires 
the visual faculty. Through each new avenue 
of sense thus successively opened to me, my 
soul, with raptures such as seraphs feel, drew 
in from the still-expanding circumference won¬ 
der and delight, and an ever-increasing con¬ 
sciousness of the depths of her own being and 
resources. Contemplating the hidden forms 
and the occult mechanism of the material uni¬ 
verse, I left behind me the problems with which 
physical science is conversant, and advanced 
to that higher philosophy which investigates 
the properties of spiritual agents; and to a 
theology, compared with which that which I 
had hitherto acquired was as insignificant as 
the inarticulate babblings of the cradle. My 
retrospective consciousness—for memory it 
can scarcely be called—spread out before me 
scenes, the bright, harmonious, and placid 
lights of which were mellowed though unob¬ 
scured by distance. Misgivings as to the sta¬ 
bility of my own opinions had fled away, as 
the truths with which I was engaged presented 
themselves to me simultaneously in their rela¬ 
tive bearings and mutual dependence. Love, 
pure and catholic, warmed and expanded my 
heart, as thoughts wise, equitable, and benign, 
flowed from other minds into my own in a 
continuous stream; the pellucid waters of 
which, in the inherent transparency of our re¬ 
generate natupe, no deceit could darken and 
no guile pollute. My corporeal fabric, now 
become the passive instrument of my will, im¬ 
portuned me with nc unwelcome intrusions; 
but buoyant, flexible, and instinct with life and 
vigour, obeyed every volition, and obstructed 
the accomplishment of none. 

Yet had I not passed into that torpid Elysium 
of which some have dreamed, and over the 
descriptions of which many more have slum¬ 
bered. Virtue, and her stern associate, Self- 
control, exact obedience not from the denizens 
of earth alone, but from the rational inhabitants 
of every province of the universal empire. 
With each accession of knowledge and of 
mental power, my view became continually 
wider and more extended of that gulf, which 
stretching out in measureless infinitude, sepa¬ 
rates the Source of Being from the most ex¬ 
alted of his intelligent offspring. My affiance 
in the Divine wisdom and rectitude, reposing 
on foundations deep and firm in proportion to 
my larger acquaintance with the ways of Pro¬ 
vidence, was still necessary to sustain my 
trembling spirit as I meditated on the myste¬ 
ries of the Divine government. For, within 



91 


PHYSICAL THEORY 

the reach of my observation, were discernible 
agonizing intensities of suffering, abysses of 
pollution and of guilt, attesting the awful 
powers both of endurance and of activity of 
minds ejected from the defences, and despoiled 
of the narcotics, once afforded them by their 
animal structure. Awakened to a sense of 
their inherent though long-slumbering ener¬ 
gies, they were captives. Exposed to every 
painful excitement by which the sentient fa¬ 
culty can be stimulated, they were naked. 
Reading on the face of nature inscriptions till 
now illegible, they saw in them their own con¬ 
demnation. Remembering each incident of 
"■their former existence, they found in each 
fresh aliment for despair. Disabused of the 
illusions of sophistry and self-love, truth shed 
on them the appalling glare of inevitable light. 
Interchanging thoughts without the possibility 
ot disguise, every foul and malignant desire 
diffused among them a deadly contagion. Des¬ 
titute of any separate wants or interests, their 
bodies could no longer minister to them the 
poor relief of an alternation of distress. The 
reluctant and occasional spectator of such 
woes, I found in faith, and hope, and meek 
adoration, the solace which my labouring spi¬ 
rit required—a task commensurate with my 
now elevated powers, though the firmest and 
the holiest of mortals, while yet detained in his 
tenement of flesh, would have been crushed 
and maddened beneath the burden of that fear¬ 
ful sight. 

In the schools of the world, I had wandered 
in the endless mazes of fate and free-will, and 
the origin of evil. An inhabitant of the great 
celestial luminary, I became aware of relations 
till then unheard of and inconceivable; be¬ 
tween the Emanative Essence and the hosts 
of subordinate spirits, and of questions thence 
resulting, of such strange and mighty import, 
that, prostrating myself before the wisdom and 
benevolence of the Most High, I was still com¬ 
pelled, in reverential awe, to acknowledge how 
inscrutable even to my expanded capacity 
was the thick darkness which shrouds his 
secret pavilion. 

Nor were there wanting tasks, which sum¬ 
moned to the utmost height of daring the most 
courageous of the inhabitants of the sphere to 
which I had been translated. Glorious recom¬ 
pense was to be won by deeds such as immor¬ 
tal beings only could undertake or meditate. 
Ministers of the Supreme, we braved at his 
bidding the privation of all other joys in the 
delight of prompt obedience to his will. We 
waged with his enemies fierce conflicts, and 
exposed ourselves to ills, intense during their 
continuance, in proportion to the exquisite sen¬ 
sibilities of our purified corporeity. Impelled 
by irresistible compassion, by the cravings of 
insatiable benevolence, or by the vehement 
desire to obtain or to impart tidings affecting 
the happiness of our own or of other orders 
of thinking beings, our active powers, with all 
our resources of constancy, magnanimity, and 
prudence, were called into habitual exercise; 
nor were there wanting dignities to be attained, 
or sceptres to be won, as the meet reward of 
illustrious achievements. 

When Astolpho descended on the hippogriff 


OF ANOTHER LIFE. 

from his lunar voyage, his first empfoyment 
was to disenchant the infuriate knight, on 
whose deliverance he had been bent when an 
ill-timed curiosity led him so far a-field. Even 
so, returning from the solar sphere to which 
the theory of a future life has unexpectedly 
conducted us, we must dissolve the fiction un¬ 
der which we have thus far proceeded, and re¬ 
store the theorist himself to his sublunary life, 
which he is so well able to enjoy and to im¬ 
prove. No longer the imaginary biographers 
either of his terrestrial or his celestial career, 
but mere contemporary critics, we must ex¬ 
empt him from all responsibility for so much 
as a single word of this narrative of his immor¬ 
tal existence. Tt exhibits, with at least no in¬ 
tentional inaccuracy, the substance of antici¬ 
pations, which, if regarded but as a chapter 
in some new Atlantus, might be borne with 
as indulgently as other Utopian discoveries, 
which the world has been none the worse for 
contrasting with the genuine but vapid plea¬ 
sures of this transitory state. That a veil ab¬ 
solutely impenetrable conceals from us the 
realities of that condition into which all the 
successive generations of men have passed, 
and into which we are following them, no one 
will seriously dispute. But neither can it be 
denied that to penetrate that dark abyss is at 
once a desire which has been felt, and an 
attempt which has been made by every race, 
nay almost by every individual of our species. 

If Scipio had his dream of colloquies after 
death with the wise and good of all ages, the 
Esquimaux has his heaven where seal-skins 
may be procured in placid seas, and undying 
lamps are fed with inexhaustible supplies of 
the odorous grease of bears. Mahomet pro¬ 
mised his Arabian converts “rivers of incor¬ 
ruptible water and rivers of milk, the taste 
whereof changeth not; gardens planted with 
shady trees, in each of which shall be two 
flowing fountains; couches, the linings where¬ 
of shall be of thick silk interwoven with gold, 
and beauteous damsels, refraining their eyes 
from beholding any but their spouses, having 
complexions like rubies and pearls, and fine 
black eyes.” The stream can rise no higher 
than the fountain. Our ideas of immortal good 
are but amplifications of our mortal enjoy¬ 
ments. To sublimate our conceptions of feli¬ 
city, by associating together all innocent and 
not incompatible delights, and by subtracting 
from them every alloy of pain, satiety, and 
languor, is to create for ourselves the only 
heaven with the contemplation of which hope 
can be sustained and activity invigorated. He 
who carefully surveys the Elysium which rea¬ 
son or imagination has laid out and planted 
for him in the next world, will acquire far 
better acquaintance with the “happy gardens” 
to which choice or fortune has directed him in 
this. Judged by this standard, and giving him 
credit for having made his public confessions 
with entire candour, the author of the “Theory 
of a Future Life” may be esteemed a wise and 
happy man—wise, because he has no fear of 
acknowledging to himself or to others the de¬ 
pendence of his spiritual on his animal econ¬ 
omy, and affects no superhuman disdain of 
mere bodily gratifications; and happy, because 




92 STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


his felicity consists in bringing the body into 
that unresisting servitude to the mind, without 
which freedom and serenity are but empty 
words. Such as is his paradise in the highest 
conceivable degree, such in the highest attain¬ 
able degree must be his earthly Eden. Dis¬ 
miss it if you will as a midsummer night’s 
dream; yet must it be confessed that it is such 
a dream as could visit no slumbers but those 
of one whose fancy was pure from sensual de¬ 
filement, and whose intellect had been trained 
to active exercise and to close self-observation. 
Or, give the theorist credit for nothing more 
than having skilfully selected the most allur¬ 
ing possibilities of future good from the many 
celestial schemes with which the poetry and 
the poetical prose of all ages abounds, and still 
it will be true that the choice has been guided 
by opinions such as every one would wish to 
adopt, and by tastes which in our better mo¬ 
ments we should all desire to gratify. The 
time subtracted, for such visions, from the 
scarcely more substantial delights among which 
we are living, will send us back to the cares 
of life, not less fitted resolutely to endure them, 
and to the pleasures of life, not less prepared 
wisely to enjoy them. 

Style in literature is like manner in society 
—the superficial index, which all can read, of 
internal qualities which few can decipher. If 
the author of these books had cared, or had 
been able, to write with ease and simplicity, or 
had he disguised his meaning under spasmodic 
contortions, or had he talked over these grave 
matters in the tone of a blunt and sagacious 
humourist, or had he dissolved them in religious 
sentiment, or flattened them down to the level 
of a monotonous orthodoxy; in short, had he 
either risen to the graces of nature, or conde¬ 
scended to those of affectation, he would have 
had more numerous and enthusiastic admirers. 
Language in his hands is an instrument of 
wonderful volume, flexibility, and compass; 
but produces harmonies of such recondite 
elaboration, that the sense aches for the even 
flow of a few plain words quietly taking their 
proper places. Felicitious expression is an 
excellent thing in its season; but serve up a 
whole octavo full of exquisite sentences, and 
neither the guest nor the cook himself can 
clearly tell what the repast is made of. In the 
works of the historian of Enthusiasm, as in 
those of Dr. Channing, penury and affluence 
of thought are made to look so like each other, 
that they must be undressed in order to be dis¬ 
tinguished ; and while he is making out which 
is which, the courteous reader is apt to lose his 
courtesy. In proportion as he is the more pro¬ 
found thinker of the two, the Englishman is 
the more to be upbraided for the perverse 
ingenuity which thus mars his own success. 
Objects so elevated as his, should not have 
been exposed to such hazard. What those ob¬ 
jects are has already been partly explained, 
but they demand additional illustration. 

Secluded from the worlds of business and 
of literature, but a keen observer of both, and 
viewing all sublunary things in their bearing 
on the eternal welfare of mankind, our author 
mourned over the low estate of theology 
amongst us, and of those higher intellectual 


pursuits with which theology maintains an in 
dissoluble connexion. We are constrained to 
doubt whether his regrets are as wisely indulged 
as they are eloquently expressed. 

Christianity is for the daily use of homely 
people. Precepts affecting all the happiness 
of this life, and doctrines involving all the in¬ 
terests of the next, are not to be delivered in 
that honeyed discourse which steeps the soul 
in self-oblivion. When truth appears amongst 
mankind in her severe and native majesty, she 
rejects the services of her accustomed hand¬ 
maids, erudition, poetry, rhetoric, philosophy 
and criticism. Eloquence alone attends her, 
but it is an eloquence of which the mere words 
are unheeded—a weapon of such edge and 
temper as to be irresistible in the grasp of the 
feeblest hand. 

And feeble indeed are many of those which 
attempt to draw this durindana from the scab¬ 
bard. Malignity itself cannot accuse our pul¬ 
pits and theological presses of beguiling us by 
the witchcraft of genius. They stand clear of 
the guilt of ministering to the disordered heart 
the anodynes of wit or fancy. Abstruse and 
profound sophistries are not in the number of 
their offences. It is a mere calumny, to accuse 
them of lulling the conscience to repose by any 
Syren songs of imagination. If the bolts of in¬ 
spired truth are diverted from their aim, it is 
no longer by enticing words of man’s wisdom. 
Divinity fills up her weekly hour by the grave 
and gentle excitement of an orthodox discourse, 
or by toiling through her narrow round of sys¬ 
tematic dogmas, or by creeping along some 
low level of schoolboy morality, or by address¬ 
ing the initiated in mythic phraseology; but 
she has ceased to employ lips such as those 
of Chrysostom or Bourdaloue. The sanctity 
of sacred things is lost in the familiar 'routine 
of sacred words. Religion has acquired a 
technology, and a set of conventional formulas, 
torpifying those who use and those who hear 
them. Her literature also bears the impress 
of an age in which the art of writing has well- 
nigh proved fatal to the power of thinking; 
when the desire to appropriate gracefully has 
superseded the ambition to originate pro¬ 
foundly ; when the commercial spirit envelopes 
and strangles genius in its folds; when demi¬ 
gods and heroes have abandoned the field; and 
the holiest affections of the heart die away in 
silence; and the ripest fruits of the teeming 
mind drop ungathered into the reaper’s bosom; 
—an age of literary democracy and intellectual 
socialism, in which no bequests are made to 
remote posterities, and no structures are ris¬ 
ing to command and break the universal 
mediocrity. 

From the retirement which he knows so well 
how to describe and to enjoy, our author casts 
a mournful gaze round this dreary horizon. 
Acquainted, perhaps, but too distinctly with 
the religious parties of his native land—their 
infirmities and their faults, he longed for the 
advent of a more catholic spirit, of a more in¬ 
tense and unostentatious piety, and of theologi¬ 
cal studies animated by some nobler impulse 
than the hire of booksellers or the praise of 
ephemeral critics. By expostulation and by 
example he has endeavoured thus to regenerate 







93 


PHYSICAL THEORY OF ANOTHER LIFE. 


the national character. Nor are the qualifica¬ 
tions which he has devoted to this enterprise 
°f an °f dinar y kind. Measured by Etonian 
a.nd Christchurch standards, he may not be en¬ 
titled to a place amongst accomplished scholars; 
but he possesses stores of knowledge which 
might atone, could such guilt admit of expia¬ 
tion, even for the crime of a false quantity. 
Familiar with the elements, at least, of all 
physical science, and intimately conversant 
with ecclesiastical history, he has explored the 
enigmas of the human heart, even too deeply 
for his own repose. His bosom yearned, and 
his mind toiled for the happiness of mankind; 
but his labours would seem not to be well sus¬ 
tained by the cheering influence of hope. He 
loves children, for they are as yet exempt from 
the prevailing degeneracy; and the face of na¬ 
ture, for it reflects the creative intelligence; 
and books, for they are the depositories of 
human wisdom; and the universal church, for 
it is the ark freighted with the best treasures, 
and charged with the destinies of our race. 
Man also he loves, but with feelings pensive if 
not melancholy, and fastidious even when 
most benignant. In his many books, there is 
not a tinge of spleen; but they exhibit that dis¬ 
gust for the follies and the vices of the world, 
which with some is the aliment of saiire, with 
others a fascination alluring them to the very 
evils they des’pise, with a few, amongst whom 
our author must lake his place, at once a sum¬ 
mons to exertion and a motive to sadness. 

Casting off these depressing influences, he 
has devoted all the resources of a comprehen¬ 
sive understanding, and all the affections of a 
benevolent heart, to correct the general debase¬ 
ment, and to exhibit a model of those higher 
pursuits to which he would reclaim his gene¬ 
ration. Enthusiasts, fanatics, spiritual despots, 
sciolists in education—pastors who slumber 
within the fold, and the robbers who spoil it, 
form a confederacy, the assailant of which 
should be encouraged by the gratitude of all 
good men. If the soul of William Cowper has 
transmigrated into any human frame, it is that 
of the historian of Enthusiasm. Not, indeed, 
that the poet has found a successor in the 
magic art of establishing a personal and affec¬ 
tionate intimacy between himself and his read¬ 
ers. There is no new fireside like that of 
Olney round which we can gather; nor any 
walks like those of Western Underwood, of 
which we are the companions; nor a heart at 
once broken and playful, whose sorrows and 
amusements are our own; nor are we sur¬ 
rounded by a family group, with tame hares, 
spaniels, bird-cages, and knitting-needles-, as 
familiar to us as those of our own boyhood, 
and almost as dear,—each in turn reflecting 
the gentle, thoughtful, elevated mind of him to 
whom they belonged, in all its vicissitudes of 
despondency and hope, of grave wisdom, and 
of mirth as light and pure as that of infancy. 
This is the high prerogative of genius, address¬ 
ing mankind at large through the vernacular 
idiom of one land in the universal language 
of all. 

But Stamford Rivers, the dwelling-place of 
the anonymous writer of these volumes, has 
iriven birth to a succession of efforts to exalt 

D 


the national character, which might vie with 
those of Olney and of Weston in piety and ear¬ 
nestness, in genuine freedom of thought, in 
the relish for domestic pleasures, and for all 
the innocent delights of life, in the filial love 
of God, and the brotherly love of man. Learn¬ 
ing and logical acumen, and a certain catholi¬ 
city of mind, which the poet neither possessed 
nor needed, impart to the works of the essayist 
a charm, without which it is vain, in these 
days, to interfere in the debates which agitate 
society. There is a charm, too, even in his dis¬ 
taste for the pursuits most in request amongst 
us; for it springs from the grandeur of the 
ideal excellence by which his imagination is 
possessed. Omniscience, though veiling its 
intimations in the coarse mantle of human 
language, will still emit some gleams of that 
radiance which illumines the regions of the 
blessed; and these he would reverently gather 
and concentrate. There is in Christianity an 
expansive power, sometimes repressed but 
never destroyed; and that latent energy he 
strives to draw forth into life and action. 
Those mysteries which shroud the condition 
and the prospects of our race, however inscru¬ 
table to the slaves of appetite, are not abso¬ 
lutely impervious to a soul purified by devout 
contemplation; and to these empyreal heights 
he aspires at once to point and to lead the 
way. To him whose foot is firmly planted on 
the eternal verities of heaven, there belong 
motives of such force, and a courage, so un¬ 
daunted, as should burst through all resistance; 
and he calls on those who enjoy this high pri¬ 
vilege to assert their native supremacy above 
the sordid ambition, the frivolities, and the 
virulence of the lower world. The voice thus 
raised in expostulation will die away, not un¬ 
heeded by the interior circle he addresses, nor 
unblessed by a meet recompense; but unre¬ 
warded, we fear, by the accomplishment of 
these exalted purposes. Eloquent as is the 
indignation with which our anonymous moni¬ 
tor regards the low level to which divine and 
human literature has fallen amongst us, and 
mean as is his estimate of the pursuits with 
which the men of his own days are engaged, a 
hope may perhaps, without presumption, be 
indulged, that less fastidious and not less capa¬ 
ble judges will pronounce a more lenient sen¬ 
tence on us and on our doings. 

In the great cycle of human affairs there are 
many stages, each essential to the consumma¬ 
tion of the designs of Providence, and each 
separated by broad distinctions from the rest. 
They whose province it is to censure, and they 
whose desire it is to improve their age, will 
never find their sacred fires extinct from the 
mere want of fuel. History and theory are 
always at hand with humiliating contrasts to 
the times we live in. That men have been 
better or might be better than they are, has 
been true since the first fathers of our race 
returned to their native dust, and will still be 
true as long as our planet shall be inhabited 
by their descendants. But below the agitated 
surface of the ocean, under-currents are si¬ 
lently urging forward, on their destined path, 
the waters of the mighty deep, themselves im 
pelled by that Power which non ' 4 may ques 



STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


94 

tion or resist. Human society obeys a similar 
influence. Laws as anomalous in appear¬ 
ance, as uniform in reality, as those which 
direct the planetary movements, determine the 
present state, and regulate the progress of 
commonwealths, whether, political, literary, or 
religious. Christianity demands the belief, and 
experience justifies the hope, that their ulti¬ 
mate tendency is towards the universal domi¬ 
nion of piety and virtue. But it is neither 
pious nor rational to suppose, that this con¬ 
summation can be attained by any sequence 
of identical causes constantly working out si¬ 
milar effects. The best generations, like the 
best men, are those which possess an indi¬ 
vidual and distinctive character. A chain of 
splendid biographies constitutes the history of 
past centuries. Whoever shall weave the chro¬ 
nicles of our own, must take for his staple sta¬ 
tistics illuminated by a skilful generalization. 
Once every eye was directed to the leaders of 
the world; now all are turned to the masses 
of which it is composed. Instead of Newtons 
presiding over royal societies, we have Dr. 
Birkbecks lecturing at mechanics’ institutes. 
If no Wolseys arise to found colleges like that 
of Christ Church, Joseph Lancaster and Wil¬ 
liam Bell have emulated each other in works 
not less momentous at the Borough Road and 
Baldwin’s Gardens. We people continents, 
though we have ceased to discover them. We 
abridge folios for the many, though we no 
longer write them for the few. Our fathers 
compiled systems of divinity—we compose 
pocket theological libraries. They invented 
_ sciences, we apply them. Literature was once 
an oligarchy, it is now a republic. Our very 
monitors are affected with the degeneracy they 
deplore. For the majestic cadence of Milton, 
and the voluptuous flow of Jeremy Taylor’s 
periods, they substitute the rhetorical philoso¬ 
phy, invented some fifty years since, to coun¬ 
tervail the philosophical rhetoric of the French 
Revolution; and put forth, in a collection of 
essays for the drawing-room, reproofs which 
the hands of Prynne would have moulded into 
learned, fierce, and ponderous folios. 

It is impossible to prevent—is it wise to be¬ 
wail, this change in our social and intellectual 
habits 1 During the inundations of the Nile, 
the worship of the mysterious river ceased, 
and no hymns were heard to celebrate its glo¬ 
ries. Idolatry lost its stay, and imagination 
her excitement; but the land was fertilized. 
Learning, once banked up in universities and 
cathedrals, is now diffused through shops and 
factories. The stream, then so profound and 
limpid, may now, perhaps, be both shallow 
and muddy. But is it better that the thirst of a 
whole nation should be thus slaked, or that the 
immortals should be quaffing their nectar 
apart in sublime abstraction from the multi¬ 
tude 1 There is no immediate and practicable 
reconcilement of these advantages. Genius, 
and wit, and science, and whatever else raises 
man above his fellows, must bend to the uni¬ 
versal motives of human conduct. ' When ho¬ 
nour, wealth, public gratitude, and the sense 
of good desert, reward those who teach ele¬ 
mentary truth to the people at large, the wisest 
and the best will devote to that office powers, 


which, in a different age, would have been 
consecrated to more splendid, though not per¬ 
haps to more worthy undertakings. 

In the state of letters, there is no maintain¬ 
ing a polity in which the three elements of 
power are blended together in harmonious 
counterpoise. There a monarch infallibly be¬ 
comes a despot, and a democracy subjugates 
to itself whatever else is eminent, or illustrious. 
Divines, poets, and philosophers, addressing 
millions of readers and myriads of critics, 
are immediately rewarded by an applause, or 
punished by a neglect, to which it is not given 
to mortal man to be superior or indifferent. 
Inform the national mind, and improve the 
general taste up to a certain point, and to that 
point you inevitably depress the efforts of those 
who are born to instruct the rest. Had Spenser 
flourished in the nineteenth century, would he 
have aspired to produce the Faery Queen 1 
Had Walter Scott lived in the sixteenth, would 
he have condescended to write the Lady of the 
Lake 1 Our great men are less great because 
our ordinary men are less abject. These 
lamentations over the results of this compro¬ 
mise are rather pathetic than just. It forms 
one indispensable chapter in the natural history 
of a people’s intellectual progress. It is one 
of the stages through which the national mind 
must pass towards the general elevation of 
literature, sacred and profane. ( We know not 
how to regret, that genius has from the moment 
abdicated her austere supremacy, and stooped 
to be popular and plain. Mackintosh surren¬ 
dered his philosophy to the compilation of a 
familiar history of England. Faithless to his 
Peris and Glendoveers, Mr. Moore is teaching 
the commonalty of the realm the sad tale of 
the woes inflicted on the land of his birth. No 
longer emulous of Porson, the Bishop of Lon¬ 
don devotes his learned desire to preparing 
cheap and easy lessons for the householders 
of his diocess. Lord Brougham arrests the 
current of his eloquence, to instruct mechanics 
in the principles of the sciences which they 
are reducing to daily practice. Tracts for the 
times are extorted from the depositories of ec¬ 
clesiastical tradition, obedient to the general 
impulse which they condemn, and constrained 
to render the Church argumentative, that they 
may render her oracular. Nay, the author of 
the “Natural History of Enthusiasm” himself, 
despite his own protests, yields at length to 
the current, and has become the periodical 
writer of monthly tracts, where, in good round 
controversial ferms, the superficial multitude 
are called to sit in judgment on the claims of 
the early fathers to sound doctrine, good 
morals,, and common sense. Let who will re¬ 
pine at what has passed, and at what is pass¬ 
ing, if they will allow us to rejoice in what is 
to come. If we witness the growth of no im¬ 
mortal reputations, we see the expansion of 
universal intelligence. The disparities of hu¬ 
man understanding are much the same in all 
times; but it is when the general level is the 
highest that the mighty of the earth rise to the 
most commanding eloquence. 

But whatever may be the justice of the hopes 
we thus indulge for future generations, our 
business is with ourselves. If, as we think, 




95 


THE PORT-! 

they are well judging who devote the best gifts 
of nature and of learning to the instruction of 
the illiterate, the praise of wisdom is not to be 
denied to such as write with the more ambi¬ 
tious aim of stimulating the nobler intellects 
amongst us to enterprises commensurate with 
their elevated powers, 

No strenuous effort for the good of mankind 
was ever yet made altogether in vain; nor will 
those of our author be fruitless, though the re¬ 
sults may fall far short of his aspirations. The 
general currents of thought and action can 
never be diverted from their channels, except 
by minds as rarely produced as they are won¬ 
derfully endowed. Energy, decision, and a self- 
reliance, independent of human praise or cen¬ 
sure, are amongst their invariable character¬ 
istics. To this sublime order of men the 
Recluse of Stamford Rivers does not belong. 
Nor can a place be assigned to him among 
those calmer spirits, whose inventive genius, 
or popular eloquence, has enabled them from 
their solitudes to cast on the agitated masses 
of society seeds of thought destined at some 
future period to change the aspect of human 
affairs. He is an independent more than an 


ROYALISTS. 

original thinker. He is rather exempt from 
fear than animated by ardent courage in an¬ 
nouncing the fruits of his inquiries. A great 
master of language, he is himself but too often 
mastered by it. He is too much the creature, 
to become the reformer, of his age. His as¬ 
siduity to please is fatal to his desire to com¬ 
mand. His efforts to move the will are de¬ 
feated by his success in dazzling the fancy. 
Yet his books exhibit a character, both moral 
and intellectual, from the study of which the 
reader can hardly fail to rise a wiser and a 
better man. Standihg aloof from all vulgar 
excitements, heedless of the transient politics 
and the fugitive literature of his times, and in¬ 
tent only on the permanent interests of man¬ 
kind, he has laboured to promote them with an 
honest love of truth, aided by brilliant talents, 
comprehensive knowledge, and undaunted in¬ 
trepidity. And thus he has come under the 
guidance of principles, which no man can culti¬ 
vate in his own bosom, or earnestly impart to 
other minds, without earning a reward which 
will render human applause insignificant, or 
reduce the neglect of the world to a matter of 
comparative indifference. 


THE POET-ROYALISTS.* 

[Edinburgh Review, 1841.] 


All religions, and all ages, have their saints; 
their men of unearthly mould; self-conquerors; 
sublime even in their errors; not altogether 
hateful in their very crimes. If a man would 
understand the dormant powers of his own na¬ 
ture, let him read the Acta Sanctorum. Or, if “ too 
high this price of knowledge,” let him at least 
acquaint himself with the legends of the later 
heroes of the Gallican church. Of all ascetics 
they were the least repulsive. They waged 
war on dullness with the ardour of Dangeau 
and St. Simon, and with still better success. 
While macerating their bodies in the cloisters 
of Port-Royal, they did not cease to be French 
men and French women of the Augustan age. 
While practising the monastic virtue of silence 
their social spirit escaped this unwelcome re¬ 
straint, in a body of memoifs as copious as 
those which record the splendour and the mise¬ 
ries of Versailles. In a series of volumes, of 
which the above is the first, the author is about 
to tell their story in the language (vernacular 
and erudite) of his country and his times. A 
rapid sketch of it may be of use in directing 
the attention of our readers to one of the most 
remarkable episodes in ecclesiastical history. 

He whose journey lies from Versailles to 
Chevreuse, will soon find himself at the brow 

* Reuchlin, Oeschichte von Port-Royal. Der Kampf 
dcs Reformirten und des Jesuistischen Katholicismus. 
1 ter Band : bis mm Tode Angelica Arnauld. (Reuchlin, 
History of Port-Royal. The Struggle of the Reformed 
and the Jesuitical Catholicism. 1st vol.: to the death 
of Angelique Arnauld.) 8vo. Leipsic, 1839. 


of a steep cleft or hollow, intersecting the mo¬ 
notonous plain across which he has been 
passing. The brook which winds through the 
verdant meadows beneath him, stagnates into 
a large pool, reflecting the solitary Gothic arch, 
the water-mill, and the dove-cot, which rise 
from its banks; with the farmhouse, the de¬ 
cayed towers, the forest-trees, and the innume¬ 
rable shrubs and creepers which clothe the 
slopes of the valley. France has many a love¬ 
lier prospect, though this is not without its 
beauty; and many a field of more heart-stirring 
interest, though this, too has been ennobled by 
heroic daring; but through the length and 
breadth of that land of chivalry and of song, 
the traveller will in vain seek a spot so sacred 
to genius, to piety, and to virtue. That arch 
is all which remains of the once crowded mo¬ 
nastery of Port-Royal. In those woods Racine 
first learned the language—the universal lan¬ 
guage—of poetry. Under the roof of that 
humble farmhouse, Pascal, Arnauld, Nicole, 
De Saci, and Tillemont, meditated those works, 
which, as long as civilization and Christianity 
survive, will retain their hold on the gratitude 
and reverence of mankind. There were given 
innumerable proofs of the graceful good hu¬ 
mour of Henry the Fourth. To this, seclusion 
retired the heroine of the Fronde, Ann Gene¬ 
vieve, Duchess of Longueville, to seek the 
peace which the world could not give. Madame 
de Sevigne discovered here a place “ tout 
propre a inspirer le desir de faire son salut * 






96 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


From the Petit Trianon and Marly, there came 
hither to worship God, many a courtier and 
many a beauty, heart-broken or jaded with the 
very vanity of vanities—the idolatry of their 
fellow mortals. Survey French society in the 
seventeenth century from what aspect you 
will, it matters not, at Port-Royal will be found 
the most illustrious examples of what imparted 
to that motley assemblage any real dignity or 
permanent regard. Even to the mere anti¬ 
quarian, it was not without a lively interest. 

At the eve of his departure to the conquest 
of the holy sepulchre, the good knight, Mat- 
thieu de Marli, cast a wistful gaze over the 
broad lands of his ancestors, and intrusted to 
his spouse, Mathilde de Garlande, the care 
of executing some work of piety by which to 
propitiate the Divine favour, and to insure 
his safe return. A Benedictine monastery, for 
the reception of twelve ladies of the Cistertian 
order, was accordingly erected, in imitation of 
the cathedral at Amiens, and by the same 
architect. Four centuries witnessed the gra¬ 
dual increase of the wealth and dignity of the 
foundation. Prelates of the houses of Sully 
hnd Nemours enlarged its privileges. Pope 
Honorius III. authorized the celebration of the 
sacred office within its walls, even though the 
whole country should be lying under a papal 
interdict; and of the host consecrated on the 
profession of a nun, seven fragments might be 
solemnly confided to her own keeping, that, 
for as many successive days, she might admi¬ 
nister to herself the holy sacrament. Yet how 
arrest by spiritual immunities the earthward 
tendency of all sublunary things 1 At the close 
of the reign of Henry IV., the religious ladies 
of Port-Royal had learned to adjust their “ robes 
a grandes manches” to the best advantage. 
Promenades by the margin of the lake re¬ 
lieved the tedium of monastic life. Gayer 
strains of music than those of the choir, might 
be heard from the adjacent woods; and if a 
cavalier from Paris or Chevreuse had chanced 
to pursue his game that way, the fair musi¬ 
cians were not absolutely concealed nor inexo¬ 
rably silent. So lightly sat the burden of their 
vows on those amiable recluses, that the gay¬ 
est courtier might well covet for his portionless 
daughter the rank of their lady abbess. 

Such at least was the judgment of M. Marion. 
He was advocate-general to Henry IV., and 
maternal grandfather of Jaqueline Marie An- 
gelique and of Agnes Arnauld. Of the arts to 
the invention of which the moderns may lay 
claim, that of jobbing is not one. M. Marion 
obtained from “ the father of his people” the 
coadjuferie of the abbey of Port-Royal for the 
high-spirited Jaqueline, then in her eighth 
year; and that of St. Cyr for the more gentle 
Agnes, over whom not more than five sum¬ 
mers had passed. The young ladies renounced 
at once the nursery and the world. A single 
step conducted them from the leading strings 
to the veil. Before the completion of her first 
decade, Angelique, on the death of her imme¬ 
diate predecessor, found herself, in plenary 
right, the abbess and the ruler of her monas¬ 
tery ; and, in attestation of her spiritual espou¬ 
sals, assumed the title and the name of the 


Mere Angelique, by which she has since been 
celebrated in the annals of the church. 

To the church, however, must not be im¬ 
puted this breach of ecclesiastical discipline. 
In the ardour of his parental affections, the 
learned advocate-general was hurried into acts 
for which he would have consigned a criminal 
of lower degree to the galleys. He obtained 
the requisite bulls from Rome by forged certi¬ 
ficates of his granddaughter’s age; and to this 
treason against the holy see, Henry himself 
was at least an accessary after the fact. Hunt¬ 
ing in the valley of Port-Royal, the gay mo- 
march trespassed on the precincts of the sacred 
enclosure. To repel the royal intruder, a child, 
bearing in her hand the crosier, which bespoke 
her high conventional rank, issued from the 
gates of the abbey at the head of a solemn pro¬ 
cession of nuns, and rebuked her sovereign 
with all the majesty of an infant Ambrose. 
Henry laughed and obeyed. Marion’s detected 
fraud would seem to have passed for a good 
practical joke, and for nothing more. In the 
result, however, no occurrence ever contri¬ 
buted less to the comedy of life, or formed the 
commencement of a series of events more 
grave or touching. It would be difficult or im¬ 
possible to discover, in the history of the 
church, the name of any woman who has left 
so deep an impress of her character on the 
thoughts and the conduct of the Christian com¬ 
monwealth. 

The family of Arnauld held a conspicuous 
station among the noblesse of Provence, in the 
twelfth and thirteenth centuries. In a later 
age, a member of that house enjoyed the sin¬ 
gular honour of at once serving Catharine de 
Medicis as her procureur-general, and of de¬ 
feating, sword in hand, at the head of his ser¬ 
vants, the force sent to assassinate him on the 
day of St. Bartholomew. Returning to the 
bosom of the church, which had thus roughly 
wooed him, he transmitted his fortune and his 
office to his son, Antoine Arnauld, the husband 
of Catharine Marion. They were the happy 
parents of no less than twenty children. Of 
these the youngest was the great writer who 
has imparted to the name of Arnauld an im¬ 
perishable lustre. Five of the daughters of the 
same house assumed the veil, in the abbey of 
Port-Royal. Their mother, Catharine Marion, 
was admitted in her widowed into that society. 
Pomponne, the minister of Louis XIV.; Le 
Maitre, unrivalled among the masters of foren¬ 
sic eloquence in France; and De Saci, the au¬ 
thor of the best version of the Holy Scriptures 
into the French language, were three of her 
grandsons. Before her death, the venerable 
matron had seen herself surrounded, in the 
monastery and the adjoining hermitages, by 
eighteen of her descendants in the first and 
second generations ; nor until the final disper¬ 
sion of the sisterhood, in the beginning of the 
seventeenth century, had the posterity of An¬ 
toine and Catharine Arnauld ceased to rule in 
the house of which Mere Angelique had, seven¬ 
ty years before, been the renowned reformer. 

To those who believe that the psychological 
distinction of the sexes may be traced to phy¬ 
sical causes, and. that, where they neither marry 



THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 


97 


nor are given in marriage, those distinctions 
will for ever disappear, the character of Ange- 
liqne is less perplexing than to the advocates 
of the opposite theory. Her understanding, 
her spirit, and her resolves, were all essen¬ 
tially masculine. She was endued with the 
various faculties by which man either extorts 
or wins dominion over his fellow-men;— 
with address, courage, fortitude, self-reliance, 
and an unfaltering gaze fixed on objects at 
once too vast to be measured and remote to 
be discerned but by the all-searching eye of 
faith. Among the Israelites of old, she would 
have assumed the office of judge; or would 
have given out oracles in the forests of an¬ 
cient Germany. 

Born in the reign, and educated near the 
court, of a Bourbon, the lighter and more gentle 
elements of her nature found exercise even 
under the paralyzing influences of an ascetic 
life; for Angelique was gay and light of heart, 
and St. Benedict himself might have forgiven 
or applauded the playful sallies of his votary. 
In scaling the heights of devotion, she could 
call to her own aid, and that of others, all the 
resources of the most plaintive or impassioned 
music. To flowers, and to the glad face of 
nature, she gave back their own smiles with a 
true woman’s sympathy. With such literature 
as might be cultivated w'ithin the walls of her 
convent, she was intimately conversant; and 
would have eclipsed Madame de Sevigne’s 
epistolary fame, had it been permitted to her to 
escape from theological into popular topics. 
Concentrated within a domestic circle, and be¬ 
stowed on a husband or a child, the affections, 
which she poured out on every human being 
who claimed her pity, would have burned with 
a flame as pure and as intense as was ever 
hymned in poetry or dreamed of in romance. A 
traveller on the highways of the world, she 
must have incurred every peril except that of 
treading an obscure and inglorious path. Im¬ 
mured by superstition in a cloister, she opened 
the way at once to sublunary fame and to an 
immortal recompense ; and has left an example 
as dangerous as it may be seductive to feebler 
minds, who, in a desperate imitation of such a 
model, should hazard a similar self-devotion. 

Angelique, indeed, might be fitted for a 
nunnery; for such was the strength, and such 
the sacred harmony of her spirit, that while 
still a sojourner on earth, she seemed already 
a denizen of heaven. When a child, she un¬ 
derstood as a child; enjoying the sports, the 
rambles, and the social delights which the 
habits of Port-Royal had not then forbidden. 
With advancing years came deeper and more 
melancholy thoughts. She felt, indeed, (how 
could she but feell) the yearnings of a young 
heart for a world where love and homage 
awaited her. But those mysteries of our being, 
of which the most frivolous are not altogether 
unconscious, pressed with unwonted weight 
on her. A spouse of Christ; a spiritual 
mother of those who sustained the same awful 
character—her orisons, her matins, and her 
vesper chants, accompanied by unearthly 
music and by forms of solemn significance; 
the Gothic pile beneath which she sat en¬ 
throned; and the altar where, as she was 

13 


taught, the visible presence of her Redeemer 
was daily manifested—all spoke to her of a 
high destiny, a fearful responsibility, and of 
objects for which all sublunary ties might well 
be severed, and a sacrifice wisely made of 
every selfish feeling. Nor need a Protestant 
fear to acknowledge, that on a heart thus con¬ 
secrated to the service of her Maker, rested 
the holy influence, familiar to all who meekly 
adore the great source of wisdom, and rever¬ 
ently acquiesce in his will. As a science, 
religion consists in the knowledge of the rela¬ 
tions between God and man; as a principle, in 
the exercise of the corresponding affections; 
as a rule of duty, in the performance of the ac¬ 
tions which those affections prescribe. The 
principle may thrive in healthful life and 
energy, though the science be ill understood 
and the rule imperfectly apprehended. For, 
after all, the great command is Love; and He 
from whom that command proceeded, is him¬ 
self Love; and amidst all the absurdities (for 
such they were) of her monastic life, Angelique 
was still conscious of the presence of a Father, 
and found the guidance of a friend. 

When at the age of eleven years, Angelique 
became the abbess of Port-Royal, few things 
were less thought of by the French ladies of 
the Cistertian order than the rule of their aus¬ 
tere founder. During the wars of the League, 
religion, by becoming a watchword, had almost 
ceased to be a reality; civil war, the apology 
for every crime, had debased the national cha¬ 
racter ; and the profligacy of manners which 
the last generation expiated by their sufferings, 
maybe distinctly paid back to the age of which 
Davila has written the political, and Bassom- 
pierre the social history. Society will still 
exert a powerful influence even over those by 
whom it has been abandoned. When Gabrielle 
d’Etrees reigned at the Louvre, beads were 
told and masses sung in neighbouring cloisters, 
by vestals who, in heathen Rome, would have 
been consigned to a living sepulchre. In a 
monastery, the spiritual thermometer ranges 
from the boiling to the freezing point with but 
few intermediate pauses. From the ecstasies 
of devotion there is but one step to disgust, 
and thence to sensuality, for most of those who 
dare to forego the- aids to piety and virtue 
which divine wisdom has provided in the du¬ 
ties and the affections of domestic life. 

While this downward progress was advanc¬ 
ing at Port-Royal, it happened that a Capuchin 
friar sought and obtained permission to preach 
there. Of the man himself, the chroniclers of 
the house have left a scandalous report; but 
they gratefully acknowledge the efficacy of his 
sermon. Angelique listened, and was con¬ 
verted. Such, at least, is her own statement; 
and unstirred be all the theological questions 
connected with it. How deep was the impres¬ 
sion on her mind, may be gathered from her 
own words;—“Often,” she exclaims, “did I 
wish to fly a hundred leagues from the spot, 
and never more to see my father, mother, or 
kindred, dearly as I love them. My desire was 
to live apart from everyone but God, unknown 
to any human being, concealed and humble, 
with no witness but himself, with no desire 
but to please him.” Her dignity as abbess 





58 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


she now regarded as a burden. Even her 
projected reforms had lost their interest. To 
live where her holy aspirations would be 
thwarted, and where examples of holiness 
would not be found, was to soar to a more 
arduous, and therefore a more attractive sphere 
of self-denial. 

That such fascinations snould dazzle a young 
lady in her seventeenth year, is, it must be 
confessed, no ve*y memorable prodigy; but to 
cherish no ineffectual emotions was one of the 
characteristics of the Mere Angelique, as it is, 
indeed, of all powerful minds. To abdicate 
her ecclesiastical rank, and by breathing a 
tainted moral atmosphere, to nourish by the 
force of contrast the loftier Christian graces, 
were purposes ultimately executed, though for 
awhile postponed. She paused only till the 
sisterhood of Port-Royal should have acquired, 
from her example or teaching, that sanctity of 
manners in which her creed informed her that 
the perfection of our nature consists. To the 
elder ladies, the prospect had few charms. 
But the will of their young abbess prevailed. 
They laid at her feet their separate possessions, 
abandoned every secular amusement, and, 
closing the gates of their monastery against 
all strangers, retired to that uninterrupted dis¬ 
charge of their spiritual exercises to which 
their vows had consigned them. Much may 
be read, in the conventual annals, of the con¬ 
test with her family to which the Mere Ange¬ 
lique was exposed by the last of these resolu¬ 
tions. On a day, subsequently held in high 
esteem as the “ Journee du Guichet,” her pa¬ 
rents and M. D’Andilly , her eldest brother, 
were publicly excluded, by her mandate, from 
the hallowed precincts, despite their reproaches 
and their prayers, and the filial agonies of her 
own heart. That great sacrifice accomplished, 
the rest was easy. Poverty resumed his stern 
dominion. Linen gave place to the coarsest 
woollens. Fasting and vigils subdued the 
lower appetites; and Port-Royal was once more 
a temple whence the sacrifices of devotion rose 
with an unextinguished flame to heaven, 
thence, as it was piously believed, to draw 
down an unbroken stream of blessings to 
earth. 

Far different were the strains that arose from 
the neighbouring abbey of Maubisson, under 
the rule of Mde. d’Etrees. That splendid 
mansion, with its dependent baronies and fo¬ 
rests, resembled far more the palace and gar¬ 
dens of Armida, than a retreat sacred to 
penitence and prayer. She was the sister of 
the too famous Gabrielle, to whose influence 
with Henry she was indebted for this rich pre¬ 
ferment. Indulging without restraint, not 
merely in the luxuries but in the debaucheries 
of the neighbouring capitol, she had provoked 
the anger of the king, and the alarm of the 
general of the order. A visitation of the house 
was directed. Madame d’Etrees, imprisoned 
the visiters, and well-nigh starved them. A 
second body of delegates presented themselves. 
Penances, at least when involuntary, were not 
disused at Maubisson. The new commission¬ 
ers were locked up in a dungeon, regaled with 
bread and water, and soundly whipped every 
morning. Supported by a guard, the general 


himself then hazarded an encounter with the 
formidable termagant. He returned with a 
whole skin, but boasted no other advantage. 
Next appeared at the abbey gates a band of 
archers. After two days of fruitless expostula¬ 
tions, they broke into the enclosure. Madame 
now changed her tactics. She took up a de¬ 
fensive position, till then unheard of in the 
science of strategy. In plain terms, she went 
to bed. A more embarrassing manoeuvre was 
never executed by Turenne or Conde. The 
siege was turned into a blockade. Hour after 
hour elapsed; night succeeded to day, and day 
to night; but still the abbess was recumbent— 
unapparelled, unapproachable. Driven thus 
to choose between a ludicrous defeat and a 
sore scandal, what Frenchman could longer 
hesitate? Bed, blankets, abbess and all, were 
raised on die profane shoulders of the archers, 
lifted into* a carriage, and most appropriately 
turned over to the keeping of the Filles l y eni- 
tentes at Paris. 

And now was to be gratified the lofty wish 
of Angelique to tread in paths where, unsus¬ 
tained by any human sympathy, she might 
cast herself with an undivided reliance on the 
Arm which she knew could never fail her. 
From the solemn repose of Port-Royal, she 
was called, by the general of the order, to as¬ 
sume the government of the ladies of Maubis¬ 
son. Thetis passing from the ocean caves to 
the Grecian camp, did not make a more abrupt 
transition. At Maubisson, the compromise be¬ 
tween religious duties and earthly pleasures 
was placed on the most singular footing. 
Monks and nuns sauntered together through 
the gardens of the monastery, or angled in the 
lakes which watered them. Fetes were cele¬ 
brated in the arbours with every pledge except 
that of temperance. Benedictine cowls and 
draperies were blended in the dance with the 
military uniform and the stiff brocades of their 
secular guests; and the evening closed with 
cards and dice and amateur theatricals, until 
the curtain fell on scenes than which none 
could more require than friendly shelter. Toil' 
and care might seem to have fled the place, or 
rather to have been reserved exclusively for 
the confessor. Even for him relief was pro¬ 
vided. Considerately weighing the extent of 
the labours they habitually imposed on him, 
his fair penitents drew up for their common 
use certain written forms of self-arraignment, 
to which he, with equal tenderness, responded 
by other established forms of conditional 
absolution. 

But the lady entered, and Comus and his 
crew fled the hallowed ground which they had 
thus been permitted to defile. She entered 
with all the majesty of faith, tempered by a 
meek compassion for the guilt she abhorred, 
and strong in that virgin purity of heart which 
can endure unharmed the contact even of pol¬ 
lution. “Our health and our lives may be 
sacrificed,” she said ‘ to her associates in this 
work of mercy; “ but the work is the work of 
God and in the strength of God she per¬ 
formed it. Seclusion from the world was again 
established within the refectory and the domain 
of Maubisson. Novices possessing a “genuine 
vocation” were admitted. Angelique directed 





THE POET-ROYALISTS. 


99 


at once the secular and the spiritual affairs of 
the convent. All the details of a feudal princi¬ 
pality, the education of the young, the care of 
the sick, the soothing of the penitents, the 
management of the perverse, the conduct of 
tae sacred offices, alternately engaged her time; 
and in each she exhibited a gentleness, a gayety, 
and a firmness of mind, before which all re¬ 
sistance gave way. The associates of Madame 
d Ltrees retained their love of good cheer, and 
Angelique caused their table to be elegantly 
served. They sang deplorably out of tune, and 
the young abbess silently endured the discord 
which racked her ear. To their murmurs she 
answered in her kindest accents. Their indo¬ 
lence she rebuked only by performing the most 
menial offices in their service; and inculcated 
self-denial by assigning to herself a dormitory, 
which, to say the truth, would -have much 
better suited the house-dog. The record of the 
strange and even sordid self-humiliations to 
which she thought it right to bow, can hardly 
be read without a smile; but, whatever may 
have been the errors of her creed, a more 
touching picture has never been drawn of the 
triumphs of love and of wisdom, than in the 
record left by Madame Suireau des'Anges of 
this passage of the life of Angelique Arnauld. 

But Madame d'Etrees was not yet at the end 
of her resources. A company of young men, 
under the guidance of her brother-in-law Count 
de Sauze were observed one evening to loiter 
near the house of the Filles Penitenles. By the 
next morning she was under their escort at the 
gates of Maubisson. Burst open by main force, 
they again admitted the ejected abbess. The 
servant who opposed her entrance was chas¬ 
tised on the spot. Patients who now occupied 
as an hospital the once sumptuous chambers 
of the abbatial lodge, instantly found themselves 
in much more humble lodgings. Cooks re¬ 
sumed their long neglected art, and Madame 
d’Etrees provided a dinner worthy of her for¬ 
mer hospitality and her recent privations. But 
in the presence of Angelique, the virago was 
abashed. To intimidate or provoke her rival 
proved alike impossible: it might be more easy 
to overpower her. De Sauze and his confede¬ 
rates made the attempt. They discharged their 
pistols and flourished their drawn swords over 
her head, with unmanly menaces. She re¬ 
mained unmoved and silent. The screams 
which the occasion demanded, were accord¬ 
ingly supplied by the intrusive abbess. Cla¬ 
mour and outrage were alike ineffectual. At 
length Madame d’Etrees and her respectable 
confessor, aided by De Sauze, laid their hands 
on Angelique, and thrust her from the precincts 
of the monastery. Thirty of the nuns followed 
her in solemn procession. Their veils let 
down, their eyes cast on the earth, and their 
hands clasped in prayer, they slowly moved to 
a place of refuge in the neighbouring town of 
Ponloise! 

But alas, for the vanity of human triumphs! 
—waving banners, and burnished arms glitter 
through the advancing column of dust on the 
road from Paris to Maubisson. Scouts an¬ 
nounce the approach of two hundred and fifty 
well-appointed archers; Madame d’Etrees and 
her cavaliers escape by the postern. A despe¬ 


rate leap saves the worthless life of her con¬ 
fessor. Her partisan, the Mere de la Sure, “ a 
nun by profession, but otherwise resembling 
a trooper,” mounts through a trap-door to a 
hiding-place in the ceiling, thence to be shame¬ 
fully dragged by an archer whom she still 
more shamefully abused. Then might be seen 
through the gloom of night, a train of priests 
and nuns drawing near with measured steps to 
the venerable abbey; on either side a double 
file of cavalry, and in each horseman’s hand a 
torch, illuminating the path of the returning 
exiles. Angelique resumed her benignant 
reign ; but not in peace. Brigands led by De 
Sauze, and encouraged by her rival, haunted 
the neighbouring forests; and though protected 
by the archers, the monastery remained in a 
state of siege. Shots were fired through the 
windows, and the life of Angelique was endan¬ 
gered. Strong .in the assurance of Divine pro¬ 
tection, she demanded and obtained the removal 
of the guard. Her confidence was justified by 
the event. Madame d’Etrees was discovered, 
was restored to her old quarters at the Filles 
Penitentes , and in due time transferred—not 
without good cause—to the chatelet; there to 
close in squalid misery, in quarrels, and in¬ 
temperance, a career which might, with almost 
equal propriety, form the subject of a drama, a 
homily or a satire. 

For five successive years Angelique laboured 
to bring back the ladfes of Maubisson to the 
exact observance of their sacred vows. Aided 
by her sister Agnes, the abbess of St. Cyr, she 
established a similar reform in a large propor¬ 
tion of the other Cistertian nunneries of France. 
All obstacles yielded to their love, their pru¬ 
dence, and their self-devotion. A moral plague 
was stayed, and excesses which even the sen¬ 
sual and the Worldly condemned, were banished 
from the sanctuaries of religion. That in some, 
the change was but from shameless riot to 
hypocritical conformity; that in others, intem¬ 
perance merely gave w r ay to mental lethargy; 
and that even the most exalted virtues of the 
cloister held but a subordinate and an equivo¬ 
cal place in the scale of Christian graces, is 
indeed but too true : yet assuredly, it was in no 
such critical spirit as this, that the labours of 
Angelique were judged and accepted by Him, 
in the lowly imitation of whom she had thus 
gone about doing good. “She has done what 
she could,” was the apology with which he 
rescued from a like cold censure the love 
which had expressed itself in a costly and 
painful sacrifice; nor was the gracious bene¬ 
diction which rewarded the woman of Bethany 
withheld from the abbess of Port-Royal. To that 
tranquil home she bent her steps, there to en¬ 
counter far heavier trials than any to which 
the resentment of Madame d’Etrees had ex¬ 
posed her. 

Accompanied by a large number of the nuns 
of Maubisson, Angelique returned to the valley 
of Chevreuse. They brought with them nei¬ 
ther silver nor gold, though rich in treasures 
of a far higher price in the account of their 
devout protectress. Poverty, disease, and 
death, were however in their train. Rising 
from the marshes below, a humid fog hung 
continually on the slopes of tne adjacent huls 





100 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


and the now crowded monastery was soon 
converted into one great hospital. But for a 
timely transfer of the whole establishment to a 
hotel purchased for them by the mother of 
Angelique in the Faubourg St. Jaques at Paris, 
their remaining history might all have been 
compressed into a chapter on the influence of 
malaria. 

The restoration of the community to health 
was not, however, the most momentous conse¬ 
quence of the change. It introduced the abbess 
to the society, and the influence of Hauranne 
de Verger, the abbot of St. Cyran, one of the 
most memorable names in the ecclesiastical 
annals of that age. When Richelieu was yet 
a simple bishop, he distinguished among the 
crowd of his companions one whose graceful 
bearing, open countenance, learning, gayety, 
and wit, revealed to his penetrating glance the 
germs of future eminence. But to an eye daz¬ 
zled by such prospects as were already dawn¬ 
ing on the ambitious statesman, those which 
had arrested the upward gaze of his young 
associate were altogether inscrutable. With 
what possible motive De Verger should for 
whole days bury himself in solitude, and chain 
down that buoyant spirit to the study of the 
Greek and Latin fathers was one of the few 
problems which ever engaged and baffled the 
sagacity of M. de Lucon. They parted; the 
prelate to his craft, the student to his books; 
the one to extort the i*eluctant admiration of 
the world, the other to toil and to suffer in the 
cause of piety and truth. They met again; 
the cardinal to persecute, and the abbot to be 
his victim. Death called them both to their 
account; leaving to them in the world they 
had agitated or improved, nothing but histori¬ 
cal names, as forcibly contrasted as they had 
been strangely associated. 

Great men (and to few could that title be 
more justly given than to Richelieu) differ 
from other men chiefly in the power of self¬ 
multiplication ; in knowing how to make other 
men adopt their views and execute their pur¬ 
poses. Thus to subjugate the genius of St. 
Cyran, the great minister had spared neither 
caresses nor bribes. The place of first almoner 
to Henrietta of England, the bishoprics of 
Clermont and Bayonne, a choice among nume¬ 
rous abbacies, were successively offered and 
refused. “Gentlemen, I introduce to you the 
most learned man in Europe,” was the cour¬ 
teous phrase by which the cardinal made 
known the friend of his youth to the courtiers 
who thronged his levee. But human applause 
had lost its charm for the ear of St. Cyran. 
The retired and studious habits of his early 
days had not appeared more inexplicable to 
the worldly-minded statesman than his present 
indifference. Self-knowledge had made Riche¬ 
lieu uncharitable. Incredulous of virtues of 
which he detected no type in the dark recesses 
of his own bosom, he saw, in his former com¬ 
panion, a treacherous enemy, if not a rival. 
There were secrets of his early life, of which 
he seems to have expected and feared the dis¬ 
closure. St. Cyran was at least the silent, and 
might become the open enemy of the declara¬ 
tion by which the parliament and clergy of 
Paris had annulled the marriage of Gaston, 


duke of Orleans, to pave the way for his union 
with the niece of the cardinal. To his long- 
cherished scheme of erecting the kingdom of 
France into a patriarchate in his own favour, 
there could arise no more probable or more 
dangerous opponent. To these imaginary or 
anticipated wrongs, was added another, which 
seems to have excited still more implacable 
resentment. An aspirant after every form of 
glory, Richelieu had convinced himself, and 
required others to believe, that his literary and 
theological were on a level with his political 
powers. He was the author of a catechism 
where might be read the dogma, that contri¬ 
tion alone, uncombined in the heart of the 
penitent with any emotion of love towards the 
Deity, was sufficient to justify an absolution at 
the confessional. One Seguenot, a priest of 
the oratory, maintained and published the op¬ 
posite opinion. Rumour denied to Seguenot 
the real parentage of the book which bore his 
name, and ascribed it to St. Cyran. From 
speculations on the love of God to feelings of 
hatred to man, what polemic will not readily 
pass, whether his cap be red or black 1 Segue- 
not’s errors were denounced by the Sorbonne, 
and the poor man himself was sent to the Bas¬ 
tille, there, during the rest of his great oppo¬ 
nent’s life, to obtain clearer views on the sub¬ 
ject of contrition. Impartial justice required 
that the real, or imputed, should fare no better 
than the nominal author; and St. Cyran was 
conducted to Vincennes, to breathe no more 
the free air of heaven till Richelieu himself 
should be laid in the grave. 

Never had that gloomy fortress received 
within its walls a man better fitted to endure 
with composure the utmost reverses of fortune. 
To him, as their patriarch or founder, the 
whole body of the Port-Royalists, with one 
voice, attribute not merely a pre-eminence 
above all other teachers, but such a combina¬ 
tion of intellectual powers and Christian graces, 
as would entitle him not so much to a place in 
the calendar, as to a place apart from, and 
above, the other luminaries in that spiritual 
galaxy. Make every deduction from their eulo¬ 
gies which a rational skepticism may suggest, 
and it will yet be impossible to evade the accu¬ 
mulated proofs on which they claim for St. 
Cyran the reverence of mankind. Towards 
the close of the first of the four volumes which 
he has dedicated to the attempt, Claude Lan¬ 
celot confesses and laments the difficulty of 
conveying to others by words any definite 
image of the sublime and simple reality which 
he daily contemplated with more than filial 
reverence. He describes a man moving through 
the whole circle of the virtues which the gos¬ 
pel inculcates, with a step so firm as to indi¬ 
cate the constant aid of a more than human 
power, and with a demeanour so lowly as to 
bespeak an habitual consciousness of that di¬ 
vine presence. He depicts a moral hero, by 
whom every appetite had been subdued, and 
every passion tranquillized, though still exqui¬ 
sitely alive to the pains and the enjoyments of 
life, and responding with almost feminine ten¬ 
derness to every affectionate and kindly feel¬ 
ing—a master of all erudition, but never so 
happy as when imparting to little children the 



THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 


101 


elementary truths on which his own heart re¬ 
posed—grave, nay, solemn in discourse, but 
with tones so gentle, a wisdom so profound, 
and words of such strange authority to ani¬ 
mate and to soothe the listener, that, in com¬ 
parison with his, all other colloquial eloquence 
was wearisome and vapid—rebuking vice far 
less by stern reproof than by the contrast of 
his own serene aspect, at once the result and 
the reflection of the perfect peace in which his 
mind continually dwelt,—exhibiting a tran¬ 
script, however rudely and imperfectly, yet 
faithfully drawn, of the great example to which 
his eye was ever turned, and where, averting 
his regard from all inferior models, it was his 
wont to study, to imitate, and to adore. In 
short, the St. Cyran of Lancelot’s portraiture 
is one of those rare mortals whose mental 
health is absolute and unimpaired—whose 
character consists not so much in the excel¬ 
lence of particular qualities, as in the sym¬ 
metry, the balance, and the well-adjusted har¬ 
monies of all—who concentrate their energies 
in one mighty object, because they live under 
the habitual influence of one supreme motive 
—who are ceaselessly animated by a love em¬ 
bracing every rational being, from Him who 
is the common parent of the rest, to the mean¬ 
est and the vilest of those who were originally 
created in his image and likeness. 

Nor was Lancelot a man inapt to discrimi¬ 
nate. He was the author of the Port-Royal 
Grammars, Greek, Latin, and the Italian, now 
fallen into disuse, but so w'ell known to such 
of us as ploughed those rugged soils during 
the first ten years of the present century. His 
biographical labours are not without a tinge of 
his style as a grammarian ;—a little tedious 
perhaps, and not a little prolix and over-me¬ 
thodical, but replete in almost every page with 
such touches of genuine dignity in the master, 
and cordial reverence in the disciple—with a 
sympathy so earnest for the virtues he cele¬ 
brates, and so simple-hearted a consciousness 
of his own inferiority—that, in the picture he 
undesignedly draws of himself, he succeeds 
more than in any other way in raising a lofty 
conception of the man by whom he was held 
in such willing and grateful subjugation. And 
he had many fellow-subjects. Richelieu him¬ 
self had felt his daring spirit awed by the 
union, in the friend of his youth, of a majestic 
repose and unwearied activity, which com¬ 
pelled the great minister to admit that the 
heart of man might envelop mysteries beyond 
his divination. Pascal, Nicole, Arnauld, and 
many others, eminent in that age for genius 
and piety, submitted themselves to his guidance 
in their studies as well as in their lives, with 
the implicit deference of children awaiting the 
commands of a revered and affectionate father. 
He was the most voluminous writer; but of his 
published works one only attained a transient 
celebrity, and of that book his authorship was 
more than doubtful. If he did not disown, he 
never claimed it. Of the innumerable inci¬ 
dents recorded of him during his imprisonment 
at Vincennes, few are more characteristic than 
the sale of a considerable part of a scanty col¬ 
lection of books he had brought there, to pur¬ 
chase clothes for two of his fellow-prisoners, 


the Baron and Baroness de Beau Soleil. “I 
entreat you,” he says to the lady to whom he 
gave this commission, “that the cloth may be 
fine and good, and befitting their station in so¬ 
ciety. I do not know what is becoming; but, 
if I remember, some one has told me that gen¬ 
tlemen and ladies of their condition oughfnot 
to be seen in company without gold lace for 
the men and black lace for the women. If I 
am right about this, pray purchase the best, 
and let every thing be done modestly, yet 
handsomely, that when they see each other, 
they may, for a few minutes at least, forget 
that they are captives.” It is in the moral, 
rather than in the intellectual qualities of St. 
Cyran, that his claim to the veneration of pos¬ 
terity must now be rested. He occupies a 
place in ecclesiastical history as the founder 
of Jansenism in France. 

Of that system of religious belief and prac¬ 
tice, the origin is to be traced to the joint 
labours of St. Cyran and Cornelius Jansen, 
during the six years which they passed in so¬ 
cial study at Bayonne. Returning to his native 
country, Jansen became first a professor ofdi- 
vinity at Louvain, and afterwards bishop of 
Ypres. There he surrendered himself to a 
life of unremitting labour. Ten times he read 
over every word of the works of Augustine; 
thirty times he studied all those passages of 
them which relate to the Pelagian controversy. 
All the fathers of the church were elaborately 
collated for passages illustrative of the opi¬ 
nions of the bishop of Hippo. At length, after 
an uninterrupted study of twenty years, was 
finished the celebrated Augustinus Cornelii 
Jansenii. With St. Austin as his text and 
guide, the good bishop proceeded to establish, 
on the authority of that illustrious father, those 
doctrines which, in our times and country, 
have been usually distinguished by the terms 
Calvinistic or Evangelical. Heirs of guilt and 
corruption, he considered the human race, and 
each successive member of it, as lying in a 
state of condemnation, and as advancing to¬ 
wards a slate of punishment; until an internal 
impulse from on high awakens one and another 
to a sense of this awful truth, and infuses into 
them a will to fly from impending vengeance. 
But this impulse is imparted only to the few; 
and on them it is bestowed in pursuance of a 
decree existing in the divine intelligence before 
the creation of our species. Of the motives of 
their preference not even a conjecture can be 
formed. So far as human knowledge extends, 
it is referable simply to the divine volition ; 
and is not dependent on any inherent moral 
difference between the objects of it, and those 
from whom such mercy is withheld. This im¬ 
pulse is not, however, irresistible. Within the 
limits of his powers, original or imparted, man 
is a free agent;—free to admit and free to re¬ 
ject the proffered aid. If rejected, it enhances 
his responsibility—if admitted, it leads him by 
continual accessions of the same supernatural 
assistance to an acquiescence in those opi¬ 
nions, to the exercise of those affections, and to 
the practice of those virtues, which collectively 
form the substance of the Christian system. 
Such is the general result of the labours of 
Jansen. On the day which witnessed the com- 





i<)2 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


pletion of them, he was removed by the plague 
to a state of being where he probably learned 
at once to rejoice in the fidelity, and to smile 
at the simplicity of those sublunary toils. 
Within an hour of his death he made a will, 
submitting his work to the judgment of the 
Church of Rome, in the communion of which 
he had lived and was about to die. He ad¬ 
dressed to Pope Urban the Eighth a letter,lay¬ 
ing the fruits of his studies at the feet of his 
holiness, “approving, condemning, advancing, 
or retracting, as should be prescribed by the 
thunder of the apostolic see.” Both the will 
and the letter were suppressed by his executors. 
Two years from the death of its author had not 
elapsed, before the Augustinus appeared in 
print. It was the signal of a contest which for 
nearly seventy years agitated the Sorbonne 
and Versailles, fired the enthusiasm of the 
ladies and the divines of France, and gave to 
her historians and her wits a theme, used with 
fatal success, to swell the tide of hatred and of 
ridicule—which has finally swept away the 
temporal greatness, and for awhile silenced 
the spiritual ministrations of the Gallican 
church. 

Having aided largely in the composition of 
this memorable treatise, St. Cyran exerted him¬ 
self with still greater effect in building up a 
society for the maintenance and promulgation 
of the principles it established. Angelique 
Arnauld and the sisterhood of Port-Royal were 
now settled at Paris, but they were still the 
proprietors of the deserted monastery; and 
there were gradually assembled a college of 
learned men, bound by no monastic vows, and 
living according to no positive rule, Benedic¬ 
tine or Franciscan. They were chiefly disciples 
of St. Cyran, and under his guidance had re¬ 
tired from the world to consecrate their lives 
to penitence, to their own spiritual improve¬ 
ment, and to the instruction of mankind. 

Of this number was Antoine Le Maitre. At 
the age of twenty-seven, he had been advanced 
to the rank of councellor of state, and enjoyed 
at the bar an unrivalled reputation for learning 
and for eloquence. When he was to speak, 
even the churches were abandoned. Quitting 
their pulpits the preachers assisted to throng 
the hall of the palace of justice; and some of 
the most celebrated among them actually ob¬ 
tained from their superiors a permanent dis¬ 
pensation from their ecclesiastical duties at 
such seasons, that they might improve in the 
art of public speaking by listening to the great 
advocate. Whep he spoke, the delight of the 
audience broke out into bursts of applause, 
which the judges were unable or unwilling to 
repress. “I would rather be the object of those 
plaudits than enjoy all the glory of my lordlhe 
cardinal,” was the somewhat hazardous ex¬ 
clamation of one of his friends, as he joined, 
heart and hand, in the universal tumult. 

Far different was the estimate which his de¬ 
vout mother had formed of the prospects of her 
son. She was one of the sisters of Angelique 
Arnauld, and amidst the cares of conjugal life 
cherished a piety at least as pure and as ardent 
as ever burned in the bosom of a Carthusian. 
In the wealth and glory which rewarded his 
forensic eminence she could see only allure¬ 


ments, to which (so she judged) his peace on 
earth, and his meetness for a holier state of 
being beyond the grave must be sacrificed. 
She mourned over his fame, and prayed that 
her child might be abased, so in due season 
he might be exalted. It happened that his 
aunt Madame D’Andilly, in the last awful 
scene of life, was attended by her kindred, and 
amongst the rest by Le Maitre. Her fading 
eye was fixed on the crucifix borne in the hand 
of St. Cyran, as she listened to his voice, now 
subdued to its gentlest accents, and breathing 
hope, and peace, and consolation. It was as 
though some good angel had overpassed the 
confines of the earthly and heavenly worlds, to 
give utterance, in human language, to emotions 
sacred as his own high abode, and to thoughts 
as lofty as his own celestial nature. The great 
orator listened, and wondered, and wept. An 
eloquence such as even his fervent imagina¬ 
tion had never before conceived, enthralled 
and subdued his inmost soul. It was but a 
soft whisper in the chamber of death; but in 
those gentle tones, and to that weeping com¬ 
pany, were spoken words, compared with which 
his own eloquence appeared to him trivial, 
harsh, and dissonant as the howlings of the fo¬ 
rest. And when his dying relative’s last sigh 
was heard, accompanied by the solemn bene¬ 
diction, “Depart, O Christian soul! from this 
world, in the name of the Almighty God who 
created you,” Le Maitre felt that the bonds 
which attached him to that world were forever 
broken. He yielded himself to the spiritual 
guidance of St. Cyran ; resigned his office and 
his calling; and plunged into a retreat, where 
in solitude, silence, and continued penances, 
he passed the remaining twenty-one years of 
his life. By the advice of his confessor, the 
execution of this design was postponed till the 
close of the annual session of the courts. In 
the interval he resumed his ordinary employ¬ 
ments, but the spirit which till then had ani¬ 
mated his efforts was gone. He became languid 
and unimpressive; and one of the judges was 
beard to mutter, that, after all, the real power 
of Le Maitre was that of persuading to sleep. 
This was too much even for a penitent. Fix¬ 
ing his eye on the critic, he once more sum¬ 
moned his dormant strength, and pouring forth 
all the energies of his soul in one last and 
most triumphant speech, he for ever quitted 
the scene of his forensic glories. At Port-Royal 
he appropriately charged himself with the care 
of the proprietary interests of the house. A 
village judge in the neighbourhood was once 
attended by the illustrious advocate on a ques¬ 
tion of the purchase of some bullocks. As¬ 
tounded by his eloquence, (so runs the story,) 
the judge fell on his knees before the pleader, 
professing his unworthiness to preside in his 
presence, and imploring that they might ex¬ 
change places. A more likely tale records 
that the booksellers had got up, during Le 
Maitre’s retreat, an edition of his speeches full 
of interpolations and errors. At “ the request 
of friends,” though not with the consent of his 
confessors, the orator undertook a corrected 
edition. His spiritual guides interfered. They 
prescribed, as a new species of penance, that 
he should silently acquiesce in this inroad oa 




THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 


103 


his fame as a speaker. The. penitent sub¬ 
mitted, but not so the booksellers. They 
(worldly men !) talked loudly of violated pro¬ 
mises, and of sheets rendered useless. He 
listened to discourses on the duty of mortifying 
these last movements of vain glory. Under 
the excitement of the dispute, his health, al¬ 
ready enfeebled by his mode of life, gave way. 
A fever decided the question against the pub¬ 
lishers ; and Le Maitre was doomed at length 
to die the victim of the brilliant career he had 
so long and resolutely abandoned. 

His brother Mons. de Sericourl was another 
of the converts of St. Cyran. De Sericourl 
had served with distinction under Conde. He 
was taken prisoner at the seige of Philtpsberg, 
and effected his escape by leaping from the 
walls of the fortress at the imminent hazard of 
.his life. Under the deep impression, which 
this incident left on his mind, of the protecting 
care of Providence, he returned to Paris, where 
his first object was to visit his brother, the re¬ 
port of whose retreat from the bar had filled 
him with astonishment. He found him (the 
words are Fontaine’s) in a kind of a tomb, where 
he was buried alive; his manner bespeaking 
all the gloom of penitence. De Sericourt was 
shocked, and in vain endeavoured to recognise 
Le Maitre in the person who stood before him. 
Immediately changing his demeanour, Le 
Maitre embraced his brother with looks full of 
gayety and spirit, exclaiming, “Behold the Le 
Maitre of former days! He is dead to the 
world, and now desires only to die to himself. 
I have spoken enough to men. Henceforth I 
wish to converse only with God. I have ex¬ 
erted myself in vain to plead the cause of 
others. Now I mr 1 to plead my own. Do you 
intend to pay me the same compliment which 
I receive from the world at large, who believe 
and publish that I have gone mad I” Nothing 
could be more remote from the judgment of 
the soldier. Instead of regarding his brother 
as mad, he aspired to share his solitude, and 
succeeded. Under the direction of St. Cyran, 
he joined in the silence and austerities of the 
advocate. During the war of the princes he 
once more took up arms for the defence of 
Port-Royal; but his monastic life was soon 
brought to a close. Philipsberg had in reality 
been attended with less danger. At the age of 
thirty-nine he died, a premature victim to fast¬ 
ings, vigils, confinement, and probably to ennui. 
Recruits for Port-Royal were but seldom drawn 
from the armies of the most Christian king, 
and could hardly have been draughted from a 
less promising quarter. 

In this memorable brotherhood there was 
yet a third, Louis Isaac Le Maitre de Saci. 
At the early age of fourteen he was placed 
by his aunt, the Mere Angelique, under the 
guidance of St. Cyran. From that prophetic 
eye the future eminence of his pupil was not 
hidden. “God will restore him to you, for his 
death would probably be the greatest loss which 
the church could sustain”—was the prediction 
with which St. Cyran at once disclosed his 
own hopes and allayed the fears of De Saci’s 
mother, as he watched over the sick-bed of her 
child. To insure the fulfilment of those hopes, 
the mind of the boy was sedulously trained. 


j Absolute, unhesitating submission to human 
I authority, as representing the Divine, was the 
cardinal principle of his education. Though 
himself one of the most conspicuous teachers 
of his age as a guide to others, he, on no sin¬ 
gle question, presumed to guide himself. If no 
other director could have been had, he would 
have placed himself under the direction of his 
valet, was the praise with which his friends 
expressed their admiration of his illustrious 
docility. By the advice or commands of St. 
Cyran, he accordingly, like his brothers, be¬ 
came one of the recluses of Port-Royal; and 
like them, transferred to the support of the mo¬ 
nastery all his worldly wealth. With them also 
he surrendered himself up to penitence, to so¬ 
litude, and to silence; and in their company 
supplied his emaciated frame with food which 
rather marked than satisfied its wants. Le 
Maitre thus describes one of the petits soupers 
of Port-Royal:—“It is, you know, but a slight 
repast which they serve up for us in the even¬ 
ing; but it engages my brother De Saci as 
completely as the most sumptuous meal. For 
my own part, such is the warmth of my tem¬ 
perament, the end of my good cheer follows so 
hard on its beginning, that I can hardly tell 
which is which. When all is over with me, 
and I have nothing left to do but to wash my 
hands, I see my brother De Saci, as composed 
and as serious as ever, take up his quarter of 
an apple, peel it deliberately, cut it up with 
precision, and swallow it at leisure. Before 
he begins, I have more than half done. When 
his little all is over,he rises from table as light 
as when he sat down, leaving untouched the 
greater part of w r hat was set before him, and 
walks off as seriously as a man who had been 
doing great things, and who never fasted ex¬ 
cept on fast-days.” Poor Le Maitre! the gay 
spirit which had animated the palace of justice 
had its transient flashes even in his “ living 
tomb;” though the smile was in this case 
lighted up at an absurdity which had well- 
nigh conducted his brother to that tomb w’here 
all life is extinct. Under these solemn paro¬ 
dies on what usually goes on at the dinner 
table, De Saci pined away; and was rescued, 
not without extreme hazard, from the effects 
of his suicidal abstemiousness. He returned 
from the gates of death with a spirit unsub¬ 
dued and undaunted; for it was animated by 
hopes, and sustained by convictions which 
gave to that last enemy the aspect and the 
welcome of a friend. Admitted, in reluctant 
obedience to his confessor, to ordination as a 
priest, he assumed the office of director to the 
recluses of either sex at Port-Royal. Nature 
struggled in the bosom of Le Maitie against 
laying bare all the secrets of his soul to the 
inspection of the younger brother. But autho¬ 
rity prevailed. Their mother led the way, by 
placing herself under the direction of her son. 
Blaize Pascal himself merely took the law of 
his conscience from the same revered lips, 
Days of persecution folld\ved; and De Saci 
was driven from his retreat, and confined for 
more than two years in the Bastille, There 
was fulfilled the prediction of St. Cyran. Fon¬ 
taine, the bosom friend of De Saci, was the 
associate of his prison hours. They wer? 






104 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


hours of suffering and of pain. Cut they had 
been ill-exchanged for the brightest and the 
most joyous passed by the revellers in the gay 
city beneath them. In those hours, De Saci 
executed, and his friend transcribed, that trans¬ 
lation of the Holy Scriptures which to this 
moment is regarded in France as the most 
perfect version in their own or in any other 
modern tongue. While yet under the charge 
of St. Cyran, the study of the divine oracles 
was the ceaseless task of De Saci. In mature 
life, it had been his continual delight; in the 
absence of every other solace, it possessed his 
mind with all the energy of a master passion. 
Of the ten thousand chords which there blend 
together in sacred harmony, there was not one 
which did not awaken a responsive note in the 
heart of the aged prisoner. In a critical know¬ 
ledge of the sacred text he may have had many 
superiors, but none in that exquisite sensibility 
to the grandeur, the pathos, the superhuman 
wisdom, and the awful purity of the divine 
original, without which none can truly appre¬ 
hend, or accurately render into another idiom, 
the sense of the inspired writers. Even the 
habitual prostration of his judgment to a 
human authority, believed to be divine, aided 
him as a translator. It forbade, indeed, the 
correction of errors, but it imparted freedom 
and confidence to the expression of all that he 
acknowledged as truth. Protestants may with 
justice except to many a passage of De Saci’s 
translation; but they will, we fear, search their 
own libraries in vain for any, where the au¬ 
thor’s unhesitating assurance of the real sense 
of controverted words permits his style to flow 
with a similar absence of constraint, and an 
equal warmth and glow of diction. 

Fontaine, the humble companion of his bibli¬ 
cal labours, had also been one of the penitents 
of De Saci. He was a man of learning, and 
his “Memoires sur M.M. de Port-Royal,” be¬ 
speak a nature gentle, affectionate, and devout. 
But to saturate his memory with the discourse 
of minds more exalted than his own, and to 
minister to them in collating or transcribing 
the books on which they were employed, li¬ 
mited his humble desires. He w r as success¬ 
ively the amanuensis of De Saci, and the secre¬ 
tary of the “great Arnauld.” With the excep¬ 
tion of Pascal, a name so great does not appear 
among the disciples of St. Cyran, or the in¬ 
mates of Port-Royal. 

Antoine Arnauld was the youngest child of 
the parents of the Mere Angelique: he was 
consequently the uncle of Le Maitre, De Seri- 
court, and De Saci. From his earliest years 
the reputation of his genius and learning had 
rendered him the object of universal notice 
and expectation. Richelieu himself is recorded 
to have stolen silently into his chamber, to 
enjoy the unpremeditated conversation of the 
young student. The cardinal had no apparent 
reason to dread that in this case his advances 
would be repulsed; for Arnauld possessed se¬ 
veral rich benefices, dressed in the fashion, 
and even kept a carriage. But repulsed they 
were, and by the influence of the man to whom 
similar allurements had been presented in vain. 
In his dungeon at Vincennes, St. Cyran re¬ 
ceived a visit from the young abb£. That 


almost magical influence was again exerted 
with irresistible power. Arnauld renounced 
his preferments, assumed the garb of peni¬ 
tence, and became the companion of his ne¬ 
phews, Le Maitre and Sericourt, in their aus¬ 
tere retirement. This abandonment of the 
world tvas not, however, so absolute, but that 
he still sought the rank of a socius, or fellow 
of the Sorbonne. By the authority of Riche¬ 
lieu, his claims were rejected. But not even 
the cardinal could obstruct the advancement 
of so eminent a scholar and divine to the dig¬ 
nity of a doctor in divinity. “To defend the 
truth, if necessary, to the death,” was in those 
days one of the vows of such a graduate— 
voavs, it is to be feared, light as air with most 
men, but, in this instance, engraven as with a 
pen of iron on the soul of the new professor of 
theology. A year had scarcely elapsed since 
he had received from the lips of his dying mo¬ 
ther an adjuration to be faithful in the defence 
of truth at the expense, Avere it possible, of 
a thousand lives. Touched with the coinci¬ 
dence of his academical oath and of this ma¬ 
ternal precept, he thenceforward existed but to 
combat for what he at least esteemed the truth; 
and endured poverty, exile, and reproach, as 
he Avould have cheerfully submitted to death, 
in that sacred warfare. In controversy he 
found his vocation, his triumph, and perhaps 
his delight. The author of more than a hun¬ 
dred volumes, he was engaged in almost as 
many contests. His great work, La frequente 
Communion, is essentially controversial. He 
warred with the Jesuits as a body; and Avith 
several of their most eminent writers, as Sir- 
mond, Nouet, and De Bonis, he carried on 
separate debates. Apologies for St. Cyran, 
Jansenius, and for the ladies of Port-Royal, 
flowed copiously from his e\ r er ready pen. 
He assailed the metaphysical meditations of 
Des Cartes, and Malebranche’s theory of mi¬ 
racles. Even with his friend and associate, 
Nicole, he contended, on an attempt to apply 
certain geometrical principles to the solution 
of some problems in divinity. Claude, Maim- 
bourg, and Annat, Avere among his adversa¬ 
ries. The mere list of his works occupies 
twenty-six closely printed octavo pages. A 
rapid analysis of them fills a large volume. If 
that compilation may be trusted, (he Avould be 
a bold man who should undertake to verify it) 
the vast collection of books which bear the 
name of Antoine Arnauld scarcely contain a 
tract, except those on mathematics, in which 
he is not engaged in theological or scientific 
strife Avith some antagonist. In the catalogue, 
of course, appears the celebrated treatise De 
la Perpetuite de la Foi sur VEucliaristie, a Avork 
reAvarded Avith higher applause than any other 
of his avoAved writings. Twenty-seven bishops 
and twenty doctors prefaced it with eulogies 
on the learning, piety, talents, and orthodoxy 
of the illustrious author. He dedicated it to 
Clement IX., and Avas repaid AAuth the most 
glowing compliments. Perhaps a still more 
gratifying tribute to his success Avas the con¬ 
version to the Roman Catholic faith of Tu- 
renne, of which this book AArns the occasion; 
and yet nothing is more certain than that the 
real author Avas not Arnauld, hut Nicole. In 



THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 


105 


the title-page of a book, designed to refute the 
formidable Claude, the two friends judged the 
name of a doctor of the church would avail 
more than that of a simple tonsure —a literary 
and pious fraud, which it is impossible to ex¬ 
cuse; and, on the side of Nicole, an example 
of zeal for a man’s cause triumphing over his 
love of fame, to which it would not be easy to 
find a parellel. Such, however, was the height 
of Arnauld’s reputation, and such the affluence 
of his mind, that it is scarcely reasonable to 
attribute this disengenuous proceeding to self¬ 
ish motives. Few men have been more ena¬ 
moured of the employments, or less covetous 
ot the rewards, of a literary life. For nearly 
threescore years he lived pen in hand, except 
when engaged in devotion, or in celebrating 
the offices of the church of Port-Royal on oc¬ 
casions of peculiar dignity. His was one of 
those rare natures to which intellectual exer¬ 
tion brings relief rather than lassitude; thus 
giving to feebler understanding the assurance, 
that the living spirit which is in man, if dis¬ 
united from the burdens of mortality, would be 
capable of efforts commensurate with an im¬ 
mortal existence. 

His book, de la frequente Communion , was 
the commencement of the seventy years’ reli¬ 
gious war which ended in the destruction of 
Port-Royal. To restore the severe maxims of 
Christian antiquity respecting the spiritual 
qualification of communicants, and thus to 
raise a standard of church membership incom¬ 
parably more exalted than that which prevailed 
in his own generation, was the avowed object 
of Arnauld. His scarcely concealed purpose 
was to chastise the lax morality to which the 
Jesuits had lent their sanction; and to repel 
their attacks on the more rigid system of St. 
Cyran. Revised in his prison by that father 
of the faithful, and sheltered by the commenda¬ 
tion of divines of every rank and order, the 
book—forbearing in style, lofty in sentiment, 
replete with various learning, and breathing 
an eloquence at once animated by unhesitating 
faith, and chastened by the most profound hu¬ 
mility—broke like a peal of thunder over the 
heads of his startled antagonists. Such was 
the fury of their resentment, that the Marshal 
de Vihe sagaciously observed, “There must be 
some secret in all this. The Jesuits are never 
so excited when nothing but the glory of God 
is at stake.” Though at first struck down by 
the censures of a conclave of bishops, with 
Mazarin at their head, Nouet, the great advo¬ 
cate of the society, returned again and again 
to the assault. Pulpits fulminated, presses 
groaned. Oh the one side the Sorbonne in¬ 
voked the aid of the civil power, then in feeble 
hands ; on the other, the Jesuits appealed to the 
papal see, then rising in new vigour from the 
disasters of the preceding century. Arnauld 
was cited by the pope, and required by the 
cardinal minister of France to appear in his 
own defence at Rome. Against this infringe¬ 
ment of the Gallican liberties, the university, 
the Sorbonne, and the Parliament of Paris re¬ 
monstrated, but Mazarin was inflexible. 

The holy see took cognisance of the cause, 
though the person of the accused was beyond 
their reach. In his absence, that infallible tri- 

U 


bunal decided not to let the world know 
whether, of the thirty erroneous opinions im¬ 
puted to Arnauld, twenty and nine were hereti¬ 
cal or not. Arnauld himself, however, Avas 
unable to stand his ground. For twenty-five 
years together, he was compelled to live in a 
voluntary concealment; which his enemies 
had not the pouter, nor perhaps the wish, to 
violate. His retirement was passed in the 
monastery of Port-Royal, or in one of the ad¬ 
jacent hermitages. 

That ancient seat of their order had now 
been long deserted by his sister Angelique and 
her associates. Their residence at Paris had 
not been unfruitful of events. They had ex¬ 
changed the jurisdiction of the general of their 
order for that of the archbishop of Paris. On 
the resignation of Angelique, the abbatial 
dignity had been made elective in their house. 
An ineffectual scheme of devoting themselves 
to the perpetual adoration of the holy cucha- 
rist, had deeply exercised their thoughts. Oc¬ 
casional miracles had awakened or rewarded 
their piety. An inspired litany (so it is be¬ 
lieved) had fallen insensibly from the pen of 
sister Agnes, which eight doctors censured, Sr. 
Cyran vindicated, and the pope suppressed. 
From his prison at Vincennes, their great 
apologist directed their consciences, and guided 
them to the office of educating children of their 
own sex—a wise and happy project, which 
brought back into the sphere of ordinary du¬ 
ties, minds soaring with indefinite aims into 
the regions of mysticism, and wasting, in efforts 
for an ideal perfection, talents eminently fitted 
to bless and to improve mankind. To restore 
the sisterhood to the quiet valley where their 
predecessors had worshipped, was the next 
care of St. Cyran. True, it threatened their 
lives; but “is it not,” he asked, “as Avell to 
serve God in a hospital as in a church, if such 
be his pleasure?” “Are any prayers more ac¬ 
ceptable than those of the afflicted?” Ange- 
lique’s heart had a ready answer to such ques¬ 
tions from such an inquirer. In that sequestered 
church Avhere angels, and a still more awful 
presence, had once dwelt, they could not but 
still abide, (such was his assurance,) and she 
returned to seek them there. She came, at¬ 
tended by a large proportion of the ladies of 
Port-Royal, hailed by the poor and aged, whom 
in former times she had cherished, and wel¬ 
comed by her kinsmen and the companions 
of their religious solitude. It was their first 
and only meeting. Les Granges (a farm¬ 
house on the hill-side) became the residence 
of the recluses, the gates of the monastery 
closing on the nuns. Bound by no monastic 
vows, the men addressed therftselves to such 
employments as each Avas supposed best quali¬ 
fied to fill. Schools for the instruction of youth 
in every branch of literature and science were 
kept by Lancelot, Nicole, Fontaine, and De 
Saci. Some laboured at translations of the 
fathers, and other Avorks of piety. Arnauld ap¬ 
plied his ceaseless toils in logic,geometry, meta¬ 
physics, and theological debate. Physicians 
of high celebrity exercised their art in all the 
neighbouring villages. 

Le Maitre and other eminent lawyers ad¬ 
dressed themselves to the Avork of arbitrating 



10G 


STEPHEN’^ MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


in all the dissensions of the vicinage. There 
were to be seen gentlemen working assidu¬ 
ously as vine-dressers; officers making shoes; 
noblemen sawing timber and repairing win¬ 
dows; a society held together by no vows; 
governed by no corporate laws; subject to no 
common superior; pursuing no joint designs, 
yet all living in unbroken harmony; all follow¬ 
ing their respective callings; silent, grave, ab¬ 
stracted, self-afflicted by fastings, watchings, 
and humiliations—a body of penitents on their 
painful progress through a world which they 
had resolved at once to serve and to avoid. 
From year to year, till death or persecution 
removed them from the valley of Port-Royal, 
the members of this singular association ad¬ 
hered pertinaciously to their design; nor among 
their annals will be found more, we think, than 
a single name on which rests the imputation 
of infidelity, or fickleness of purpose. To the 
nuns, indeed, no such change was possible. 
Like the inhabitants of Les Granges, they em¬ 
ployed themselves in educating the children 
of the rich and the poor, in almsgiving, and in 
other works of mercy. Their renunciation of 
secular cares was combined (no common alli¬ 
ance) with an entire superiority to all secular 
interests. Angelique, now the elected abbess, 
and in that character the ruler of the tempo¬ 
ralities of the convent, exhibited a princely 
spirit of munificence—nourished and sustained 
by the most severe and self-denying economy. 
She and her sisterhood reserved for themselves 
little more than a place in their own list of 
paupers. So firm was her reliance on the Di¬ 
vine bounty, and so abstemious her use of it, 
that she hazarded a long course of heroic im¬ 
providence, justified by the event and ennobled 
by the motive, but at once fitted and designated 
rather to excite the enthusiasm of ordinary 
mortals, than to afford a model for their imita¬ 
tion. Buildings were erected both at Port- 
Royal de Paris and Port-Royal des Champs; 
in the serene majesty of which the wmrshipper 
might discern an appropriate vestibule to the 
temple made without hands, towards which his 
adoration was directed. Wealth was never 
permitted to introduce, nor poverty to exclude 
any candidate for admission as a novice or a 
pupil. On one occasion twenty thousand francs 
were given as a relief to a distressed commu¬ 
nity; on another, four times that sum -were re¬ 
stored to a benefactress, whose heart repented 
a bounty which she had no longer the right to 
reclaim. Their regular expenditure exceeded 
by more than seven-fold their certain income; 
nor were they ever disappointed in their 
assurance, that the annual deficiency of more 
than forty thousand francs would be supplied 
by the benevolence of their fellow Christians. 
What was the constraining force of charity, 
Angelique had learned from the study of her 
own heart, and she relied with a well-founded 
confidence on the same generous impulse in 
the hearts of others. The grace, the gayety, 
and tenderness of her nature, which might 
have embellished courts and palaces, were 
drawn into continual exercise to mitigate the 
anguish of disease, to soothe the wretched, and 
to instruct the young. Her hands ministered 
day and night to the relief of those whose ma¬ 


ladies were loathsome or contagions, and her 
voice allayed their terrors. With playful in¬ 
genuity she would teach her associates how to 
employ the vestments, the furniture, and, when 
other resources failed, even the sacred plate 
of the monastery, in clothing the naked, though 
it left themselves in want, and in feeding the 
hungry, though it deprived themselves of all 
present resources. While distributing not 
merely to the necessities of the indigent, but 
to the relief of persons of her own rank in life, 
there was in the bosom of Angelique a feeling 
which revolted not against dependence on alms, 
for her vows of poverty required it, but against 
soliciting aid even from her nearest kindred;— 
a feeling condemned as human, perhaps, in 
her stern self-judgment, but assuredly one of 
those emotions which the best of our race are 
the last to relinquish. And if it be true, as 
true it surely is, that to the culture and exer¬ 
cise of the benevolent affections, as an ultimate 
end all other ends of human life—knowledge, 
practical skill, meditative power, self-control, 
and the rest—are but subservient means, who 
shall deny to such a course of life as that of 
the nuns of Port-Royal, the praise of wisdom, 
however ill he may judge of the wisdom which 
established and maintained conventical insti¬ 
tutions 1 Some affections, indeed, they could 
not cultivate. Two of the deepest and the 
richest mines of their nature, maternal and 
conjugal love, lay umvrought and unexplored. 
Yet they lived, as wisdom we are told ought 
to live, with children round their knees; train¬ 
ing them for every office in life, if not with a 
mother’s yearnings, with perhaps something 
more than a mother’s prudence. Over this 
singular theocracy, male and female, presided 
St. Cyran, exercising from his dungeon a su¬ 
preme authority; and under him ruled Antoine 
Singlin, the general confessor both of the re¬ 
cluses and the nuns. In the conduct of souls, 
(such is the appropriate style,) Singlin was 
supposed to excel all the professors of that 
most critical science. Pascal, De Saci, and 
Arnauld sat at his feet with child-like docility. 
Ministers of state, advocates, and bishops, 
crowded reverently round his pulpit; yet by 
the confession, or rather the boast of his disci¬ 
ples, he was distinguished neither by learning, 
talents nor eloquence. The mystery of his 
absolute dominion over intellects so incom¬ 
parably superior to his own, is partly, at least, 
dispelled by what remains of his writings. 
They indicate a mind at once discriminating 
and devout, conversant alike with human na¬ 
ture and with the Divine, exerting all its powers 
to penetrate the labyrinth of man’s heart, and 
recruiting these powers by habitual commu¬ 
nion with the source of wisdom. 

Guided by such pastors, the Port-Royalists 
were following out a progress more tranquil 
than that of John Bunyan’s Pilgrim, when the 
wars of Fronde rudely scattered the shepherd 
and the flock. Most of the nuns fled for refuge 
to Paris, but the recluses (they were French¬ 
men still) appeared three hundred strong, in 
defence of their sequestered valley. Above 
their hair-shirts glittered coats of mail. As the 
last notes of the anthem died away, the trum¬ 
pet summoned the worshippers to military ex- 



THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 


107 


ercises. Spears and helmets flashed through 
the woods—plumes waved over many a fur¬ 
rowed brow—intrenchments, which may still 
be traced, where thrown up; and the evening- 
gun, the watchword, and the heavy tread of 
cavalry, broke a silence till then undisturbed, 
except by the monastic choir, or the half- 
uttered prayer of some lonely penitent. De 
Sericourt felt once again his pulse beat high 
as he drew out the martial column, and raised 
the long forgotten words of peremptory com¬ 
mand. But ere long a voice more subdued, 
though not less peremptory, was heard to si¬ 
lence his. De Saci’s heart mourned over this 
reliance on an arm of flesh. Watching the 
first pause in the new enthusiasm of his asso¬ 
ciates, he implored them to lay a*side their 
weapons ; and in long-suffering to submit them¬ 
selves and their course to the Supreme Dis¬ 
poser of events. At an instant the whole aspect 
of Port-Royal was changed.' Students returned 
to their books, penitents to their cells, and han¬ 
dicraftsmen to their ordinary labours. It was 
a change as sudden and as complete as when, 
at the bidding of the Genius, the crowded 
bridge and the rushing river disappeared from 
the eyes of Mirza, leaving before him nothing 
but the long hollow valley of Bagdad, with 
oxen, sheep, and camels grazing on the sides 
of it. 

To one inmate of Port-Royal the terrors of 
an impending war had brought no disquietude. 
Angelique remained there, the guardian angel 
of the place. Hundreds of ruined peasants 
were daily fed by her bounty. “ Perhaps I 
shall not be able” (the quotation is from one 
of her letters written at the time) “ to send you 
a letter to-morrow, for all our horses and asses 
are dead with hunger. Oh! how little do 
princes know the detailed horrors of war. All 
the provender of the beasts we have been 
obliged to divide between ourselves and the 
starving poor. We have concealed as many 
of the peasants and of their cattle as we could, 
in our monastery, to save them from being 
murdered and losing all their substance. Our 
dormitory and the chapter-house are full of 
horses;—we are almost stifled by being pent 
up with these beasts, but we could not resist 
the piercing lamentations of the starving and 
the heart-broken poor. In the cellar we have 
concealed forty cows. Our court-yards and 
out-houses are stuffed full of fowls, turkeys, 
ducks, geese, and asses. The church is piled 
up to the ceiling with corn, oats, beans, and 
peas, and with caldrons, kettles, and other 
things belonging to the cottagers. Our laun¬ 
dry is filled by the aged, the blind, the maimed, 
the hall, and infants. The infirmary is full of 
sick and wounded. We have torn up all our 
rags and linen clothing to dress their sores; 
we have no more, and are now at our wits’ end. 
We dare not go into the fields for any more, 
us they are full of marauding parties. We 
hear that the abbey of St. Cyran has been 
burned and pillaged. Our own is threatened 
with an attack every day. The cold weather 
alone preserves us from pestilence. We are 
so closely crowded, that deaths happen con¬ 
tinually. God, however, is with us, and we 
arc at peace.” 


That inward peace wnich Angelique was 
thus enabled to maintain during the horrors 
of civil war, was soon to be exposed to a more 
arduous trial. To the baffled antagonists of Ar- 
nauld, Port-Royal was an abomination. There 
dwelt in safety their intended victim, plying 
his dreaded pen, surrounded by his kindred, 
his scholars, and his allies ; and all engaged in 
the same contest with the casuistry, the theo¬ 
logy, and the morals of the society of Jesus. 
Against those devoted enemies one Brisacier, 
a Jesuit, led the assault. His articles of im¬ 
peachment bore that they despised the Eucha¬ 
rist, that they had neither holy water nor 
images in their churches, and that they prayed 
neither to the Virgin nor the Saints. Vain the 
clearest refutation of calumnies so shocking 
to the Catholic ears, and vain the archiepis- 
copal thunders which rebuked the slanderer. 
Father Meignier, of the same holy company, 
denounced to the astonished world a secret 
conspiracy against the religion of Christ, the 
leaders of which were the abbot of St. Cyran 
and Antoine Arnauld—the Voltaire and the 
Diderot of their age. But human credulity 
has its limits, and Meignier had overstepped 
them. Fora moment the assailants paused; 
but at last, the womb of time, fertile in prodi¬ 
gies, gave birth to the far-famed “five propo¬ 
sitions” of Father Coruet—a palpable obscure, 
lying in the dim regions of psychological divi¬ 
nity, and doomed for successive generations 
to perplex, to exasperate, and to overwhelm 
with persecution, or with ridicule, no incon¬ 
siderable part of the Christian world. That 
these five dogmas on the mystery of the divine 
grace, were to be found within the Augustinus 
of Jansenius, was not the original charge. 
They were at first denounced by Coruet as 
opinions drawn from the work of the bishop 
of Ypres, by Arnauld and other doctors of the 
Gallican church, and by them inculcated on 
their own disciples. Innocent the Tenth con¬ 
demned the propositions as heretical; and to 
the authority of the Holy See, Arnauld and his 
friends implicitly bowed. In a wood-cut pre¬ 
fixed to this papal constitution by the triumph¬ 
ant Jesuits, Jansenius appeared in his episco¬ 
pal dress, but accoutred with the aspect, the 
wings, and the other well-known appendages 
of an evil spirit, around whom were playing 
the lightnings of the Vatican. 

The man and the heresy thus happily dis¬ 
posed of, a single question remained—Were 
the peccant propositions to be found in the 
Augustinus? Arnauld declared that he had 
studied the book from end to end, and could 
not find them there. That there they were 
nevertheless to be found, the Jesuits as strong¬ 
ly asserted. To have quoted by chapter and 
page the offensive passages, would have spoiled 
the most promising quarrel which had arisen 
in the church since the close of the Tridentine 
Council. Still-born must then have perished 
the ever-memorable distinction of the droit and 
the fait —the droit being the justice of the papal 
censure, which all Catholics admitted—the fait 
being the existence, in the Augustinus, of the 
censured propositions, which all Jansenists 
denied. The vulgar mode of trial by quota¬ 
tion, being discarded, nodung remained but 



108 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


trial by authority. Annat, the king’s confessor, a 
Jesuit in religion, and Mazarin, the king’s mi¬ 
nister, a Jesuit in politics, each, from different 
motives, found his account in humiliating the 
Port-Royalists. Selected by them, a conclave 
of Parisian doctors decreed that the five pro¬ 
positions were in the book, and should be in 
the book. A papal bull affirmed their sentence, 
and then a second conclave required all the 
ecclesiastics, and all the religious communi¬ 
ties of France, to subscribe their assent to the 
order which had thus affiliated these bastard 
opinions on poor Jansenius. That such a de¬ 
fender of the faith as Antoine Arnauld should 
receive their mandate in silence, the authors 
of it neither wished nor expected. In words ex¬ 
actly transcribed, though not avowedly quoted, 
from Chrysostome and Augustine, he drew up 
his own creed on the questions of grace and 
free-will; and in good round terms acquitted 
the Bishop of Ypres of having written more or 
less. A third conclave censured the apologist, 
unconscious apparently that their fulminations 
would reach the holy fathers of Constantinople 
and Hippo. They at least reached the object 
at which they in reality aimed. “ Could the 
most Christian king permit that penitent re¬ 
cluses and young children should any longer 
assemble for instruction, under the influence 
of a man convicted of heresy on the subject of 
efficacious grace, and unable or unwilling to 
find in the Augustinus what the pope himself 
had said might be found there 1” Anne of 
Austria listened; Mazarin whispered, and she 
obeyed. Armed with her authority, her lieu¬ 
tenants appeared at Port-Royal to restore Les 
Granges and the forests around it to their an¬ 
cient solitude; and then had for ever fallen the 
glories of that sacred valley, but for an inci¬ 
dent so strange and opportune, as to force 
back the memory to the precipitate descent 
from Mount Ida of the Homeric deities, to 
rescue, in the agony of his fate, some panting 
hero on the field of Troy. 

Mademoiselle Perrier was the niece of Blaize 
Pascal. She was a child in her eleventh year, 
and a scholar residing in the monastery of 
Port-Royal. For three years and a half she 
had been afflicted with a fistula lacrymalis. 
The adjacent bones had become carious, and 
the most loathsome ulcers disfigured her coun¬ 
tenance. All remedies had been tried in vain; 
the medical faculty had exhausted their re¬ 
sources. One desperate experiment remained 
—it was the actual cautery. For this the day 
was appointed, and her father had set out on a 
journey to be present at the operation. Now 
it came to pass that M. de la Potherie, who 
was at once a Parisian ecclesiastic, a great- 
uncle of Angelique and of Arnauld, and an 
assiduous collector of relics, had possessed 
himself of one of the thorns composing the 
crown of which we read in the Evangelists. 
Great had been the curiosity of the various 
convents to see it, and the ladies of Port-Royal 
had earnestly solicited that privilege. Accord- 
.ngly, on the 24th of March, in the year 1G56, 
the day of the week being Friday, and the 
week the third in Lent, a solemn procession 
of nuns, novices, and scholars, moved along 
the choir of the monastic church, chanting ap¬ 


propriate hymns, and each one, in her turn, 
kissing the holy relic. When the turn of Ma¬ 
demoiselle Perrier arrived, she, b} r the advice 
of the schoolmistress, touched her diseased 
eye with the thorn, not doubting that it would 
effect a cure. She regained her room, and the 
malady was gone! The cure was instanta¬ 
neous and complete. So strict, however, was 
the silence of the abbey, especially in Lent, 
that except to the companion who shared her 
chamber, Mademoiselle Perrier did not at first 
divulge the miracle. On the following day 
the surgeon appeared with his instruments. 
The afflicted father was present; exhortations 
to patience were delivered; and every'prepa¬ 
ration was complete, when the astonished ope¬ 
rator for the first time perceived that every 
symptom of the disease had disappeared. All 
Paris rang with the story. It reached the ear 
of the queen-mother. By her command, Mr. 
Felix, the principal surgeon to the king, inves¬ 
tigated and confirmed the narrative. The royal 
conscience was touched. Who but must be 
moved with such an attestation from on high, 
of the innocence of a monastery divinely se¬ 
lected as the theatre of so great a miracle ? 
Anne of Austria recalled her lieutenant. Again 
the recluses returned to their hermitages; the 
busy hum of schoolboys was heard once more 
at Port-Royal; and in his ancient retreat Ar¬ 
nauld was permitted to resume, his unremitting 
labours. 

Time must be at some discount with any 
man who should employ it in adjusting the 
“ balance of improbabilities” in such a case as 
this. But there is one indisputable marvel 
connected with it. The greatest genius, the 
most profound scholar, and the most eminent 
advocate of that age, all possessing the most 
ample means of knowledge, all carefully in¬ 
vestigated, all admitted, and all defended with 
their pens, the miracle of the holy thorn. Eu¬ 
rope at that time produced no three men more 
profoundly conversant with the laws of the 
material world, with the laws of the human 
mind, and with the municipal law, than Pas¬ 
cal, Arnauld, and Le Maitre: and they were 
all sincere and earnest believers. Yet our 
protestant incredulity utterly rejects both the 
tale itself and the inferences-drawn from it, 
and but for such mighty names, might yield to 
the temptation of regarding it as too contempt¬ 
ible for serious notice. Why is this!—a ques¬ 
tion which volumes might be well employed 
to answer. In this place, a passing notice is 
all that can be given to it. 

Antecedently to their investigation of the 
evidence, Pascal, Arnauld and Le Maitre, may 
be supposed to have reduced their reasonings 
on the subject "to the following syllogism:— 
The true Church is distinguished from all 
others by the perennial possession of miracu¬ 
lous gifts: But the Church of Rome is the true 
church. Therefore, when a miracle is alleged 
to have happened to her fold, the presumption 
is not against, but in favour of the truth of the 
statement; and therefore, aided by that pre¬ 
sumption, credit is due in such a case to testi¬ 
mony which would be insufficient to substan¬ 
tiate the fact under any other circumstance. 
Negamus majorem. It is not in the spirit of 



THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 


100 


paradox, far less in that of irreverence or levity, 
that we would maintain the reverse—namely, 
that a church, really distinguished by the per¬ 
manent exercise of miraculous powers, would 
presumably be not a true church, but a false. 

Probability is the expectation of the recur¬ 
rence of usual sequences. Certainty is the ex¬ 
pectation of the recurrence of sequences be¬ 
lieved to be invariable. The disappointment 
of such an expectation may be the disclosure 
of some uniform sequence hitherto unknown: 
that is, of one of the laws of nature, or it may 
be a miracle—that is, the disturbance of those 
laws by some power capable of controlling 
them. He who alleges a miracle, alleges the 
existence of natural laws ; for there can be no 
exception where there is no rule. Now, to as¬ 
cribe the laws of nature to any power but that 
ot God, is atheism. To ascribe an habitual in¬ 
fringement of these laws to powers at once 
subordinate and opposed to the divine, is con¬ 
sistent alike with piety and with reason. The 
analogies of natural and revealed religion not 
only permit, but require, us thus to judge. For 
example; the moral law of God is love. That 
law is habitually infringed by human selfish¬ 
ness. Submission to the legitimate exercise 
of legitimate authority, is a law from heaven. 
That law is habitually infringed by human 
sell-will. That within the range of his powers 
of action, man should be a free agent, is the 
divine law. That law, as we learn from the 
gospels, was habitually infringed in the case 
of demoniacs. That the blood of the dead 
should corrupt and not liquefy; that houses 
should be built and not fly: that diseases should 
be cured by therapeutics, or not at all, are all 
physical laws of nature—that is, of God. Those 
physical laws, we are told, are habitually in¬ 
fringed within the fold of the Roman Catholic 
Church. Be it so. But if so, what is the in¬ 
ference! That the Roman Catholic Church 
is the depositary of divine truth, and the spe¬ 
cial object of divine favour?—We wot not. 
Where such truth resides, and such favour 
rests, there will be a harmony, not elsewhere 
to be found, with .the general laws of the di¬ 
vine economy, and the general principles of 
the divine government. The law is higher 
than the anomaly. The rule is more worthy 
than the exception. That conformity to the 
eternal 07dinances of heaven, whether psycho¬ 
logical or physical, should indicate the posses¬ 
sion of truth and holiness in a church, is in¬ 
telligible. That a systematic counteraction of 
any such ordinances should^indicate the same, 
is not intelligible. If in any society any law 
of the divine government is habitually reversed, 
the inference would seem to be, that such a 
society is subject to the control of some power 
opposed to the divine. . Will it be answered 
that every disturbance of the laws of God must 
proceed from the Author of those laws, and at¬ 
test his agency and approbation? Why so? 
His moral laws are violated every instant by 
rebel man, why not his physical laws by rebel 
angels ? Moses and Paul, and that divine 
teacher to whom Pascal, Arnauld, and Le 
Maitre, bowed their hearts and desired to bow 
their understandings, all assure us that this is 
no impossible supposition. Or will it be an¬ 


swered that such reasonings impugn the mi¬ 
racles of Christ himself? If so, we at least 
abandon them as fallacious; for,sooner should 
our right hand forget its cunning, than be em¬ 
ployed to write one word having that tendency. 
But the cases are utterly dissimilar. Assume 
the reality both of the series of miracles re¬ 
corded in the gospels, and of the perennial 
series of miracles recorded in the Roman 
Catholic legends, and it is perfectly consistent 
to discern in the one the seal of truth, and in 
the other the impress of error. Our Redeem¬ 
er’s miracles blend in perfect harmony, though 
not in absolute unison, with those laws, physical 
and moral, which he established in the creation, 
and fulfilled in the redemption of the world. 
In their occasion—in their object—in their ful¬ 
filment of prophecy—in their attendant doc¬ 
trine—and in their exceptional character, they 
are essentially distinguished from the perennial 
miracles of Rome. These are in absolute dis¬ 
cord with the laws which the miracles of Christ 
fulfil. If compelled to believe them true, we 
should not be compelled to refer them to a di¬ 
vine original. But that the truth of such stories 
as that of the holy thorn should ever have 
commanded the assent of such men as Pascal, 
Arnauld and Le Maitre, is, after all, a standing 
wonder, and can be accounted for only by re¬ 
membering that they assumed as inevitable, 
and hailed as invaluable, an inference which, 
as it seems to us, is not to be drawn from the 
premises, even if established. 

Judge as we may of the miraculous attesta¬ 
tion to the innocence of Port-Royal, which 
commanded the assent of Pascal, sentence is 
irreversibly passed by mankind on the prodigies 
wrought, at the same time and in the same 
cause, by the pen of that wonder-working con¬ 
troversialist. In the whole compass of litera¬ 
ture, ancient and modern, there is probably no¬ 
thing in the same style which could bear a 
comparison with the “ Provincial Letters.” 
Their peculiar excellence can be illustrated 
only by the force of contrast; and, in that 
sense, the “Letters of Junius” may afford the 
illustration. To either series of anonymous 
satires must be ascribed the praise of exquisite 
address, and of irresistible vigour. Each at¬ 
tained an immediate and lasting popularity; 
and each has exercised a powerful influence 
on the literature of succeeding times. But 
here all resemblance ends. No writer ever 
earned so much fame as Junius, with so little 
claim to the respect or gratitude of his readers 
He embraced no large principles; he awakened 
no generous feelings; he scarcely advocated 
any great social interest. He gives equally 
little proof of the love of man, and of the love 
of books. He contributed nothing to the in¬ 
crease of knowledge, and but seldom ministered 
to blameless delight. His topics and his 
thoughts were all of the passing day. His in¬ 
vective is merciless and extravagant; and the 
veil of public spirit is barely thrown over his 
personal antipathies and inordinate self-es¬ 
teem. No man -was ever so greatly indebted 
to mere style ; yet, with all its recommenda¬ 
tions, his is a style eminently vicious. It is 
laboured, pompous, antithetical—never self- 
forgetful, never flowing freely, never in re 

K 






no 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


pose. The admiration he extorts is yielded 
grudgingly; nor is there any book so univer¬ 
sally read which might become extinct with 
so little loss to the world as “The Letters of 
Junius.” Reverse all this, and you have the 
characteristics of the “Provincial Letters.” 
Their language is but the transparent, elastic, 
unobtrusive medium of thought. It moves 
with such quiet gracefulness as entirely to es¬ 
cape attention, until the matchless perspicacity 
of discussions, so incomprehensible under any 
management but his, forces on the mind an in¬ 
quiry into the causes of so welcome a pheno¬ 
menon. Pascal’s wit, even when most formi¬ 
dable, is so tempered by kindness, as to show 
that the infliction of pain, however salutary, 
was a reluctant tribute to his supreme love of 
truth. His playfulness is like the laugh of 
childhood—the buoyancy of a h.eart which has 
no burden to throw off, and is gay without an 
effort. His indignation is never morose, vin¬ 
dictive, or supercilious: it is but philanthropy 
kindling into righteous anger and generous re¬ 
sentment, and imparting to them a tone of aw¬ 
ful majesty. The unostentatious master of all 
learning, he finds recreation in toils which 
would paralyze an ordinary understanding; 
yet so sublimated is that learning with the 
spirit of philosophy, as to make him heedless 
of whatever is trivial, transient, and minute, 
except as it suggests or leads to what is com¬ 
prehensive and eternal. But the canons of 
mere literary r criticism were never designed to 
measure that which constitutes the peculiar 
greatness of the author of the “ Provincial Let¬ 
ters.” His own claim was to be tried by his 
peers—by those, who in common with him, 
possess a mental vision purified by contem¬ 
plating that light in which is no darkness at 
all, and affections enlarged by a benevolence 
which, having its springs in heaven, has no 
limits to its diffusion on earth. Among his 
ascetic brethren in the valley of Port-Royal, he 
himself recognised the meet, if not the impar¬ 
tial judges of his labours. They hailed with 
transport an ally, who, to their own sanctity of 
manners, and to more than their own genius, 
added popular arts to which they could make 
no pretension. Perhaps they were taught by 
the excellent M. Singlin to regard and censure 
such exultation as merely human. That great 
spiritual anatomist probably rebuked and 
punished the glee which could not but agitate 
the innermost folds of Arnauld’s heart, as he 
read his apologist’s exquisite analysis of the 
Pouvojr Prochain , and of the Graces SuJJisantcs 
qui ne sont pas ejjicaces. For history records 
the misgivings of Mademoiselle Pascal, how 
far M. Singlin would put up with the indomit¬ 
able gayety which would still chequer with 
some gleams of mirth her brother’s cell at Les 
Granges, even after his preternatural ingenuity 
had been exhausted in rendering it the most 
desolate and cheerless of human abodes. 

Whatever may have been his treatment of his 
illustrious penitents, the good man was not 
long permitted to guide them through their 
weary pilgrimage. The respite obtained for 
Port-Royal by the holy thorn and the “ Provin¬ 
cial Letters,” expired with the death of Mazarin 
and with the authority of the queen-mother. 


Louis began, as he believed, to act for himself 
—a vain attempt for a man who could never 
think for himself. The genius, such as it was, 
of the dead minister, had still the mastery over 
the inferior mind of the surviving monarch. 
Louis had been taught by the cardinal to fear 
and to hate De Retz, Jansenism, and Port-Royal. 
Poor Singlin was therefore driven away, and 
in due time consigned to the Bastille. At the 
bidding of the king, a synod of the clergy of 
France drew up an anti-Jansenist test, to be 
taken by all ecclesiastics, and by all religious 
communities, male and female; fortified, of 
course, by effective penalties. They were all 
required to subscribe their names to a declara¬ 
tion that the “ five propositions,” in their hereti¬ 
cal sense, were to be found in the Augustinus , 
with no exception in favour of those who had 
never seen the book, or of those who could not 
read Latin. Nor was this an ineffectual me¬ 
nace. Blow after blow fell on those who re¬ 
fused, and even on those who were expected 
to refuse, thus to condemn the bishop of Ypres. 
Port-Royal was formost among such obdurate 
recusants. Their schools, male and female, 
were dispersed. Arnauld and the other re¬ 
cluses were banished from the valley. The 
admission of novices and postulantes was in¬ 
terdicted to the abbess; and her ancient monas¬ 
tery was threatened with suppression as con¬ 
tumacious and heretical. 

Angelique Arnauld was now sinking under 
the pressure of infirmity and of old age. Half 
a century had elapsed since the commencement 
of her reforms, and her tale of threescore years 
and ten had been fully told ; but ere she yielded 
her soul to him who gave it, she rose from her 
dying bed to make one more effort for the pre¬ 
servation of the house, so long devoted, under 
her guidance, to works of mercy and to exer¬ 
cises of penitence and prayer. Surrounded by 
a throng of weeping children, and by her eldest 
associates maintaining their wonted compo¬ 
sure, she, for the last time, quitted Port-Royal 
des Champs, giving and receiving benedictions, 
and went to die at the convent of Port-Royal 
de Paris. She found the gates guarded, and 
the court-yards filled by a troop of archers, the 
executioners of the royal mandate for expelling 
the scholars, novices, postulantes, and other 
unprofessed inmates of the house. During 
eight successive days, one after another of these 
helpless women was torn from the place around 
which their atfections had twined; and from 
the arms of the dying mother, whom they loved 
with the tenderness of children, and regarded 
with more than filial reverence. Seventy-five 
persons were thus successively separated from 
her, as from hour to hour she descended to the 
tomb, under bodily and mental sufferings de¬ 
scribed with fearful minuteness in the obitua¬ 
ries of Port-Royal. “ At length our good Lord 
has seen fit to deprive us of all. Fathers, 
sisters, disciples, children — all are gone. 
Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Such was 
her announcement to Madame de Sevign£ of 
the emptying of the first vial of kingly wrath. 
To the queen-mother she addressed herself in 
a loftier, though not in a less gentle tone. At 
each momentary remission of her agonies, she 
dictated to Anne of Austria a letter, long and 




THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 


• lit 


justly celebrated as a model of epistolary elo¬ 
quence. It has no trace of debility, still less 
ot resentment. Her defence is as clear and as 
collected, as though, in the fulness of health, 
she had been conducting the cause of another. 
Without a reproach or a murmur, she exposes 
the wrongs oi her sisterhood, and the error of 
her persecutors. For herself she asks no 
sympathy; but, from the verge of the world 
she had so long renounced, and was now about 
to quit for ever, she invokes from the deposit¬ 
aries ol worldly power, the justice they-owed 
to man, and the submission due to the ordi¬ 
nances of heaven. “ Now, my earthly business 
is done! was her grateful exclamation as this 
letter was closed; and then commenced a 
mental and bodily strife, recorded, perhaps, but 
too faithfully by her biographers. These 
pages, at least, are no fit place for the delinea¬ 
tion ol a scene over which the sternest specta¬ 
tor must have wept, and the most hardened 
must have prayed fervently for the sulferer 
and for himself. From the dark close of a life 
so holy and so blameless, and from the hope, 
and peace, and joy, which at length cast over 
her departing spirit some radiance from that 
better state on the confines of which she stood, 
lessons may be drawn which we have no com¬ 
mission to teach, and which are perhaps best 
learned without the intervention of any human 
teacher. Yet, even in Port-Royal itself, there 
were not wanting some to whom this admoni¬ 
tion of the vanity of human things was ad¬ 
dressed in vain. 

Among that venerable society, the Soeur 
Flavie Passart was unrivalled in the severity 
of her self-discipline, and the splendour of her 
superhuman gifts. As often as illness con¬ 
fined her to her bed, so often did a miracle 
restore her. The dead returned to her with 
messages from the other world. No saint in 
the calendar withheld his powerful influence 
in the court of heaven when she invoked it. 
Like many wiser folks, Soeur Flavie disco¬ 
vered at last, and doubtless to her own sur¬ 
prise, that she had become (there are none 
but masculine terms to express it) a liar and 
a knave. The same discovery was oppor¬ 
tunely made by her associates, and arrested 
her progress to the elective dignities of the 
abbey. A penitent confession of her Jansenist 
errors, a denunciation of the more eminent 
ladies of Port-Royal as her seducers, and a 
retractation of her heretical belief in the inno¬ 
cence of Jansenius, might, however, still pave 
her way to the abbatial throne. So judged the 
/Soeur Flavie, and so decided M. Perifixe, the 
then archbishop of Paris. She merely asked 
the imprisonment of twenty-six of her rivals, 
lie cheerfully accorded so reasonable a boon. 
Repairing in pontifical state to the Parisian 
monastery, he again tendered the anti-Jansen- 
ist test. Angelique was gone; but her spirit 
and her constancy survived. The simple- 
hearted nuns thought that it would be a mere 
falsehood to attest the existence of “five pro¬ 
positions," in a book which they had never 
seen, and could not read; and truth, they knew, 
was the command of God, let pope, cardinal, 
or archbishop, say what they would to the con¬ 
trary. Perefixe interdicted their admission to 


the holy sacrament. “Well, my lord," :hey 
replied, “ there is in heaven a Judge who reads 
the heart, and to him we commend our cauie." 
“Ay, ay," rejoined the exemplary prelate. 
“ when we get to heaven it will be time enough 
to consider that, and see how things go there." 

Eight days elapsed; and still*no change of 
purpose, no subscription to the test. Preceded 
by his crosier, the mitre on his brows, his train 
borne by ecclesiastics, and followed by a long 
line of archers, the archbishop reappeared. 
Much he discoursed respecting his own mild¬ 
ness, and much of the obduracy of the nuns. 
In proof of both, twenty-three of their number 
were conveyed to separate places of confine¬ 
ment. But the fruits of her treachery were not 
reaped by the Soeur Flavie. By the influence 
of the archbishop, the Soeur Dorothde Perdreau 
was elected abbess. That lady established her 
residence at Paris; she effected a final separa¬ 
tion of the two monasteries; and gave enter¬ 
tainments at the Parisian convent which might 
vie with the most brilliant of any which formed 
the boast of the neighbouring hotels. For ten 
months her exiled sisters remained in prison. 
Perefixe then ordered their return to Port- 
Royal des Champs, there to be excluded from 
the sacraments of the church, and to die un¬ 
anointed and unannealed. The recluses of the 
valley were to be seen there no more. They 
lived in hiding-places, or pined away in dun¬ 
geons. Singlin died of extremity of suffering 
in the Bastille. It must be admitted, that if 
the existence of the “ five propositions” in the 
Augustinus was not verified by the attestation 
of a score or two of old ladies, Louis and his 
clergy have not to bear the responsibility of so 
great a misfortune to the church. 

Twelve years before, the miracle of the holy 
thorn and the genius of Pascal had rescued 
Port-Royal from impending destruction. A 
person scarcely less unlike the common herd 
of mortals than the author of the “Provincial 
Letters,” and whose elevation had been owing 
to events which some may think more miracu¬ 
lous than the cure of Pascal’s niece, now in¬ 
terposed in their behalf, and with not inferior 
success. 

Anne Genevieve de Bourbon was born in 
the year 1619, in the castle of Vincennes, where 
her father, Henry, Prince of Orleans, was 
then confined. The misfortunes of her family, 
and especially the execution of the constable, 
Montmorency, her maternal uncle, had pre¬ 
disposed in early youth, to serious thought, a 
mind distinguished to the last by an insatiable 
craving for strong emotions. To renounce the 
world, and to take the veil among the sister¬ 
hood of Carmelites of the Faubourg St. Jaques, 
were the earliest of the projects she had formed 
to baffle the foul fiend ennui. A counter-pro¬ 
ject, devised by her mother, was, that the 
young princess should present herself at a 
court ball. Maternal authority, perhaps incli¬ 
nation, on the one side, and conscientious 
scruples on the other, balanced and distressed 
the spirit of the high-born maiden. She betook 
herself for guidance to the Faubourg St. Jaques, 
A council on the arduous question was held 
with ail the form, conventual and theatrical, 
which the statutes of the order and the fanev 







112 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


of the nuns required or suggested. As presi¬ 
dents, sat two of their number, one imperson¬ 
ating the grace of Penitence, the other the 
virtue of Discretion. From the judgment-seat 
so occupied, went forth the sentence, that Anne 
Genevieve de Bourbon should attend the ball, 
and should Surrender herself “de bonne foi” 
to all the dresses and ornaments prepared for 
her; but that in immediate contact with her 
person she should be armed with the peniten¬ 
tial girdle, commonly called a cilice. Above 
the talisman which thus encircled that young 
and lovely form, glowed the bright panoply of 
the marchande fas modes. Beneath it throbbed 
a heart responsive in every pulse to the new 
intoxication. Penitence and Discretion took 
their flight, no more to return till, after the 
lapse of many a chequered year, the cilice was 
again bound over a heart, then, alas! aching 
with remorse, arid bowed down with the con¬ 
trite retrospect of many a crime and many a 
folly. At the hotel de Rambouillet, she was 
initiated, with her brother, afterwards “the 
great Conde,” into the Parisian mystery of 
throwing over the cold hard lineaments of 
downright selfishness, the fine-woven draperies 
of polite literature, of sentimentality, and of 
taste. She had scarcely read any books; but 
she could discourse eloquently on all. Mis¬ 
tress of the histrionic art, all words fell be- 
witchingly from a voice with which every 
look, and gesture, and attitude, combined in 
graceful harmony. De Retz notices the exqui¬ 
site etTect of the sudden bursts of gayety which 
would at times dispel her habitual, but not in¬ 
expressive languor. Sarazin and Voiture were 
proud to receive their laurels from her hands, 
or to beg them at her feet. Statesmen and 
generals sought or seemed to seek, her coun¬ 
sels. Even her mitred correspondents infused 
into their pastoral admonitions a delicacy and 
a glow of language, which reveal alike her 
skill to fascinate, and their desire to please. 

Vows of celibacy no longer promised an 
escape from lassitude. At the age of twenty- 
tliree, she gave her hand to Henry D’Orleans, 
Due de Longueville, who had already num¬ 
bered forty-seven. The duke repaired as pleni¬ 
potentiary to the conferences at Munster. The 
duchess remained at Paris, the idol of the 
court. Unexplored, at least by us, be the scan¬ 
dalous chronicle of a scandalous age. She 
rejoined him in time to shelter, if not entirely 
to save her reputation. As she floated down 
the Meuse in a royal progress, (for such it 
really was,) the sister of Conde was received 
with more than royal honours. Troops lined 
the banks; fortresses poured forth their garri¬ 
sons to welcome her approach; the keys of 
Namur, then held by Spain, were laid at her 
feet; complimentary harangues hailed her ar¬ 
rival at Liege, Maastricht, and Ruremonde; 
and amidst the roar of cannon, and the accla¬ 
mations of ten thousand voices, the triumphant 
beauty was restored to the arms of her hus¬ 
band. At Munster she exhibited tbe state and 
'splendour of a crowned head. But her heart 
was depressed by ennui, if not agitated by 
more guilty emotions. Tours were undertaken, 
palaces built, wars of etiquette were success¬ 
fully waged with r ; val princesses; diplomatic 


intrigues twisted and untwisted; but glooni 
still settled in the spirits of her to whose di¬ 
version all other minds were ministering. She 
returned to‘Paris. Cond£ had exalted the glo¬ 
ries of her house. Mazarin got up an Italian 
opera for her amusement. Benserade and 
Voiture referred to her award the question 
then agitating the whole Parisian w r orld, of the 
comparative excellence of their rival sonnets. 
She became a mother. On every side the te¬ 
dium of existence was assailed by new excite¬ 
ment; but melancholy still brooded over her. 
Relief was, however, at hand. The dissen¬ 
sions, the wars, the intrigues of the Fronde, 
filled the void which nothing else could fill. 
Her share in that mad revel is known to all 
the readers of De Retz, La Rochefoucalt, De 
Monspensier, and De Motteville. Her younger 
brother, the Prince de Conti, was but a puppet 
in her hands. With Conde, she quarrelled one 
day, and made it up the next De Retz was 
alternately her ruler and her dupe. Marsaillac 
alone acquired a lasting influence over her 
mind. He flattered, amused, animated, and 
governed her, to whose government alone the 
factious and the frivolous were alike willing 
to bow. With her infant in her arms, she ap¬ 
peared on the balcony, at the Hotel de Ville, 
“beautiful,” says De Retz, “with her dress 
apparently, but not really, neglected, while at 
the Greve, from the pavement to the tiles, was 
a countless multitude of men shouting with 
transport, and women shedding tears of ten¬ 
derness.” Never did mob-idolatry assume a 
more bewitching aspect. Hushed into affec¬ 
tionate silence were the harsh voices of the 
many-headed monster, as the peerless dame 
gave birth to “Charles Paris,” her second son. 
Crowded even was that sick-chamber with 
black-robed counsellors, and plumed officers, 
soliciting her commands for the defence of the 
blockaded capital. Peace came, and she met 
almost on equal terms the haughty widow 
and mother of the kings of France. For her 
brother and her husband, she demanded and 
obtained the government of provinces ; for her¬ 
self a state ball at the Hotel de Ville, with the 
presence of the queen-mother to grace her tri¬ 
umph ; for Marsaillac the entrde at the Louvre 
in his carriage; for his wife a tabouret. There 
are limits to human endurance. Against the 
entree and the tabouret the whole nobility of 
France awoke in generous resentment. Astraea 
once more took her flight. Conde, Conti, and 
poor De Longueville himself, were conducted 
to Vincennes; our heroine fled to Normandy. 
Besieged in the castle of Dieppe, she escaped 
on foot, and, after a march of some leagues 
along the coast, reached a fishing-boat, which 
lay at atichor there, awaiting her arrival. A 
storm was raging; but, in defiance of all remon¬ 
strances, she resolved to embark. In an an- 
stant she was struggling for life in the water. 
Rescued with difficulty, but nothing daunted, 
.she mounted behind a horseman, and for fifteen 
days evaded the pursuit of her enemies, in 
mean and desolate hiding-places. At length, 
reaching Havre, an English vessel conveyed 
her to Rotterdam. From that disastrous eclipse, 
she emerged with undiminished splendour. 
From Stenay, Turenne advanced to meet her 






THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 


113 


at the head of all his forces. She became a 
party with him to the convention by which the 
king of Spain bound himself to maintain the 
war with France till the liberation of the three 
captive princes; and sixty thousand crowns 
were promised for the support of the table and 
equipages of Turenne and the Princesse de 
Longueville. That more tender bonds than 
those of war and treason did not unite them, 
is ascribed by her biographers to her prefer¬ 
ence for one La Moussaye, the commandant 
of Stenay. There she braved the denuncia¬ 
tions of her sovereign, opposing one manifesto 
to another, and adding to her other glories the 
praise of diplomatic eloquence. Again the 
centre of all intrigufe, the delirium, whether 
ambitious or voluptuous, of her heart, yielded 
for awhile (and where beats the heart which 
is not enigmatical]) to remembrances,at once 
bitter and soothing, of the Carmelites of St. 
Jaques, with whom, in days of youth and inno- 
cency, she had joined in far different aspira¬ 
tions. out in the phantasmagoria at Paris, the 
scenes are again shifted. The Parliaments 
remonstrate, the princes are enlarged, the car¬ 
dinal exiled, and a royal declaration attests the 
innocence of Mademoiselle de Longueville, 
“Vousn’etes plus criminelle si ce n’est de lese 
rmours,” was the greeting on this occasion of 
her favourite Sarazin. She rewarded the poet 
with an embassy to the Spanish government; 
for the duchess had now undertaken a nego¬ 
tiation for peace between the two crowns. Her 
second triumph, however, was still incomplete. 
She returned in all the pomp of a conqueror to 
Paris, and once more met on equal terms the 
majesty of France. 

It may reasonably be doubted whether there 
exists at this day one human being who has 
found leisure and inclination to study, with ex¬ 
act attention, the history of the wars of the 
“Fronde.” But that they disturbed the peace, 
and postponed the rising greatness of a mighty 
nation, they would have as little to commend 
them to serious regard, as the cabals one may 
suppose to distract the fair council presiding 
over the internal economy of Almacks. To 
assert, during the weakness of a long minority, 
some popular rights not otherwise to be main¬ 
tained, and to restore the greater nobility to the 
powers of which Richelieu had dispossessed 
them, were indeed motives which gave some 
show of dignity to the first movements of the 
Frondeurs; but meaner passions, more frivo¬ 
lous questions, interests more nakedly selfish, 
or in themselves more contemptible, never be¬ 
fore or since roused a people to w'ar, or formed 
a pretext for rebellion. Cardinals, judges, 
monarchs, princesses, courtiers, and generals, 
whirl before the eye in that giddy maze—in¬ 
triguing, lying, jesting, imprisoning, and killing, 
as though Bacchus, Momus, and Moloch, had 
for awhile usurped a joint and absolute domi¬ 
nion over the distracted land. Among the 
figurantes in this dance of death, none is more 
conspicuous than the duchesse de Longueville. 
In the third and last of these preposterous 
wars, the royal authority triumphed, and her 
star declined; but it now set to rise again in a 
new and far purer radiance. Like the wisest 
of the sons of men, she had applied her heart 

15 


to see if there was any good thing under the 
sun ; and, like him, she returned with a spirit 
oppressed by the hopeless pursuit, and pro¬ 
claiming that all is vanity. “I have no wish 
so ardent” (such is her confession to the 
prioress of the Carmelites) “ as to see this war 
at an end, that, for the rest of my days, I may 
dwell with you, and apart from all the world 
besides. Till peace is concluded, I may not 
do so. My life seems to have been given me 
but to prove how bitter and how oppressive 
are the sorrows of this mortal existence. My 
attachments to it are broken, or rather crushed. 
Write to me often, and confirm the loathing I 
feel for this sublunary state. 

It was a weary way which the returning 
penitent had to retrace. Now rising towards 
the heaven to which she aspired, her fainting 
spirit would again sink down to the earth she 
had too much loved. Long and arduous was 
the struggle—tardy, and to the last precarious, 
the conquest. But the conquest was achieved. 
Gainsay it who will, the spirit of man is the 
not unfrequent, though the hidden scene of 
revolutions, as real as that which from the 
seed corruptiqg in the soil beneath us, draws 
forth the petals, diffusing on every side their 
fragrance, and reflecting in every varied hue 
the light of heaven. He who, with disappointed 
hopes, and the satiety of all the pleasures 
which earth has to offer, seeks refuge in that 
sanctuary which in the heat and confidence of 
youth he had despised, may well expect that 
human judges will note the change with in¬ 
credulity or derision: nor, perhaps, has he 
much right to complain. There ever must be 
some ground for others to doubt whether the 
seeming love of long-neglected virtues be more 
than a real distaste for long-practised vices. 
That the rouce should pass into the ennuyee , 
and the ennuyee into the devotee, may appear as 
natural as that the worm should become a 
chrysalis, and the chrysalis a butterfly. To 
the wits be their jests, and to the mockers their 
gibes. To those who can feel for some of the 
deepest agonies of our common nature, such 
jests will be at least less welcome than the be¬ 
lief that, when innocence is gone, all is not 
lost; and the conviction, that over the soul 
blighted and depraved by criminal indulgence, 
may still be effectually brooding an influence 
more gentle than a mother’s love, and mightier 
than all the confederate powers of darkness 
and of guilt. Few readers of the later corres¬ 
pondence of the duchess of Longueville, will 
doubt that the change in her character was the 
result of such a renovating energy. At the 
age of thirty-four she finally retired from the 
cabals in which she had borne so conspicuous 
a part. Cond£ had now taken up arms against 
her native country, and Turenne commanded 
her armies. The duchesS mourned alike the 
success and the reverses of her brother. De 
Longueville, a kind-hearted man, hailed with 
unabated tenderness her return to the paths ol 
wisdom and peace. She watched with true 
congenial care over his declining years, andf 
even extended her kindness to one of his ille¬ 
gitimate daughters. 

Touched by her altered conduct, the king 
and the queen’s mother admitted her not merely 

k2 






114 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


to their favour, but to a high place in their re¬ 
gard; nor are there many incidents in the life 
of Louis so-amiable, as the affectionate gentle¬ 
ness of his demeanour to this once dangerous 
but now self-humbled enemy. On the death 
of her husband she expended immense sums 
in the attempt to repair, in some degree, the 
calamities which the war of the princes had 
inflicted on the peasantry. In a single year 
she restored to freedom, at her own expense, 
nine hundred persons imprisoned for debt; and 
had a list of no less than four thousand prison¬ 
ers subsisting altogether on her bounty. The 
austere penances which at least attested her 
sincerity, were combined on all becoming oc¬ 
casions with the princely magnificence due to 
her exalted station. Her eldest son, the Comte 
Du Dunois, a feeble-minded youth, turned Je¬ 
suit, took orders, escaped to Rome, and was 
placed under permanent restraint. The Comte 
St. Paul, her only other child, was a wild pro¬ 
fligate. He enjoyed ecclesiastical benefices 
of the annual value of 50,000 crowns, which 
she compelled him to'resign unconditionally 
to the disposal of the king. Lous revered and 
applauded such unwonted disinterestedness, 
and exerted all the magic'of his flattery to win 
her back again to the court and to the world. 
But she had learned a salutary lesson of self¬ 
distrust. In the valley of Port-Royal she built 
a modest residence, where she found repose, 
if not serenity; and soothed with humble hopes 
a spirit too deeply contrite to be visited by more 
buoyant feelings. Her own hand has traced 
the history of her declining years; nor have 
the most pathetic preachers of that age of pul¬ 
pit eloquence bequeathed to us a more im¬ 
pressive admonition. Whoever would learn 
what are the woes of ministering, by reckless 
self-indulgence, to the morbid cravings of the 
heart for excitement; or how revolting is the 
late return to more tranquil pursuits; or how 
gloomy is the shadow which criminal passions, 
even when exercised,'will yet cast over the 
soul they have long possessed ; or how, through 
that gloom, a light pure as its divine original, 
may dawn over the benighted mind with still 
expanding warmth and brightness — should 
study the Letters and the Confessions of Anne 
Genevieve, duchesse de Longueville. 

To explain what was the task she undertook, 
we must return a little in our former steps. 

Such, and so conversant with the ways of 
the world was the diplomatist who at length 
appeared for the rescue of the ladies of Port- 
Royal. No less skilful hand could have un¬ 
ravelled the folds in which the subject had 
been wrapped by intrigue and bigotiy. 

The original anti-Jansenist test had been 
promulgated by a synod of the clergy of France, 
adopted by the Sorbonne, and enforced by 
Louis. To the remonstrances of the nuns 
against being required to attest by their signa¬ 
tures a matter of fact of which they had, and 
could have no knowledge, the king had an¬ 
swered only by reiterating the demand for a 
•‘pure and simple” subscription. “His ma¬ 
jesty,” observed the princess de Guemene, “is 
supreme. He can make princes of the blood, 
pishops and archbishops. Why not martyrs 
also?” It was a branch of the royal preroga¬ 


tive which he was nothing loathe to exercise 
De Retz abdicated the see of Paris, and was 
succeeded by De Marca, the author of the 
Formulary. Availing themselves of so happy 
an occasion, the Jesuits at Clermont drew up 
a thesis, in which was propounded, for the ac¬ 
ceptance of the faithful, the naked dogma of 
papal infallibility, not only on points of doc¬ 
trine but as to mere matters of fact. Arnauld 
and his friends protested. Their protest was 
refuted by the hand and the torch of one of the 
great polemics of that age—the public execu¬ 
tioner. De Marca did not live long; and his 
death brought with it a truce in this holy war. 
His successor in the see of Paris, M. de Perifixe, 
resumed it, but with greater subtlety. He 
taught that it was enough if a matter of fact, 
asserted by the pope, were believed not d \mefui 
divine , but d’unefoi humaine. Whether, in the 
Virgilian elysium, the recompense awarded to 
the inventors of useful arts awaits the authors 
of useful distinctions has not been revealed to 
us ; but if so, De Perifixe may there have found 
his recompense. On earth it was his hard fate 
to be refuted by Nicole, to'be laughed at by the 
Parisians, and to be opposed by the ladies of 
Port-Royal. They had no faith, divine or hu¬ 
man, and they would profess none, as to the 
contents of a large folio written in a language 
of which they were entirely ignorant. “ Pure 
as angels,” said the incensed archbishop; 
“ they are proud as devils !” How he punished 
their pride has already been recorded. 

.When a great dignitary has lost his temper, 
there is nothing which he should more stu¬ 
diously avoid than the being hooked into the 
sort of contemporary record which the French 
call a proccs verbal. In the midst of the nuns 
of Port-Royal, De Perifixe had stormed and 
scolded more in the style of a poissarde than 
of an archbishop of Paris; and when the 
chronicle of all his sayings and doings on the 
occasion stole into light, with all the forms of 
notarial certificates, he found himself, to his 
unutterable dismay, the hero of as broad a farce 
as had ever delighted that laughter-loving city. 
It was the single joke of which the nuns had 
ever been either the willing or the uninten¬ 
tional authors; and they soon found to their 
cost that it was no light matter to have directed 
the current of ridicule against an archiepisco- 
pal, and, through him, against a royal censor. 

The invincible opposition of the Port-Royal¬ 
ists to the test, had awakened a more extended 
resistance. Men had begun to deny the right 
of assemblies of the clergy, or of the king him¬ 
self, to impose such subscriptions. To retreat 
was, however, no longer possible. Louis, 
therefore, by the advice of the Jesuits, desired 
the pope himself first to draw up a formula, 
which should declare his own infallible know¬ 
ledge of matters of fact; and then to require 
the universal acceptance of it. Alexander the 
Seventh exultingly complied. Subscription to 
De Marca’s test was now exacted by papal 
authority, with the addition that the subscrib¬ 
ers should call on the Deity himself to attest, 
their sincerity. To this demand the great 
body of the clergy of France submitted, but 
still the resistance of the nuns of Port-Royal 
was unsubdued. Four years of persecution—- 



115 


THE PORT- 

»'l mean, unmanly, worrying persecution—fol¬ 
lowed. I he history ot it fills many volumes 
of the conventual annals, exciting in the mind 
of him who reads them, feelings of amazement 
and disgust, of respect and pity, strong enough 
to carry him through what it must be confessed 
is but a wearisome task. Prom the poor rem¬ 
nant of earthly comforts which these aged wo¬ 
men had retained, the mean-spirited king, his 
bigoted confessors, and his absurd archbishop, 
daily stole whatever could be so pilfered. 
From their means of preparing the world 
where the wicked cease from troubling, every 
deduction was made which sacerdotal tyranny 
could enforce. But no tyraiwiy could 'induce 
them to call on the God of truth to attest a lie. 
One after another went down, with no priestly 
absolution, to graves which no priest would 
bless; strong, even amidst the weakness and the 
mortal agonies of nature, in the assurance, 
that the path to heaven could not be found in 
disobedience to the immutable laws which 
Heaven itself had established. 

Among the bishops of France, four had been 
faithful enough to insist, on the droit and the 
fa t. In publishing the papal bull, they at¬ 
tached to it an express statement of their dis¬ 
sent from this new pretension of Rome. Of 
these prelates, one was a brother of the great 
Arnauld, and bore the same name. Alexander 
the Seventh was nowon his death-bed; he had 
even received extreme unction. But at the 
awful hour he retained enough of human or 
of papal feeling to launch against the four pre¬ 
lates, a brief full of menaces, w’hicli it devolved 
on his successor, Rospigliosi, to execute. But 
Clement the Ninth was a man of far greater 
and more Christian spirit. He had mourned 
over the distractions of the church, and had 
made it his appropriate glory to mediate be¬ 
tween the contending crowns of Spain and 
Portugal. To him the duchesse de Longue- 
ville addressed herself on behalf of Port-Royal, 
in a letter of the most insinuating and impres¬ 
sive eloquence. His nuncio at Paris was made 
to feel all the powers of that fascinating influ¬ 
ence which she still knew how to employ. At 
her hotel, and in her presence, a secret commit¬ 
tee met daily for the management of this affair. 

It was composed of three bishops, aided by 
Arnauld and Nicole. Condo himself was in¬ 
duced by his sister to lend the weight of his 
authority to her projects. Even Le Tellier 
was circumvented by the toil spread for him 
by this great mistress of intrigue. For nearly 
eighteen months she laboured to overcome the 
obstacles which the pride of Rome and "f 
Louis, and the ill-will of the Father Annat, his 
confessor, opposed to her. All difficulties at 
iength yielded to her perseverance and her 
diplomatic skill. The four bishops were con¬ 
tent to denounce the “five propositions” as 
heretical, and to promise “a submission of 
respect and discipline” as to the fact, declaring 
that “they would not contest the papal deci¬ 
sion, but would maintain an absolute silence 
on the subject.” One of them insisted on add¬ 
ing an express statement of the infallibility 
of the church respecting such matters of fact 
as the contents of a book. Clement the Ninth 
was, however, satisfied. Peace was restored 


ROYALISTS. 

to the Gallican church. Medals were struck, 
speeches made, and solemn, audiences accord- 
ed by Louis to Arnauld and his associates. 
De Saci and his fellow-prisoners were set at 
liberty. Port-Royal was once more permitted 
to recruit her monastery, to open her schools, 
and to give shelter to her dispersed recluses. 
Among the events which signalized the pacifi¬ 
cation of Clement the Ninth, one demands 
especial notice. Malebranche had signed the 
Formulary. He now frankly avowed that he 
had condemned Jansenius without reading his 
book, and implored the pardon of God and of 
man for his guilty compliance. It may per¬ 
haps be consolatory to some., in our own times, 
to be informed, that in censuring as heretical 
the book of a professor of divinity, of which 
they knew nothing but the title-page, they 
might have pleaded the example of so great a 
man—a comfort, however, to which they will 
not be entitled, unless they imitate also the 
example of his repentance. 

Ten years elapsed from this pacification be¬ 
fore the close of the extraordinary career of 
the duchess of Longueville; and they were 
years distinguished in the chronicle of Port- 
Royal by little else than the peaceful lives and 
the tranquil deaths of many of the inhabitants 
of the valley. In their annals are to be found 
more than a century of names, to which their 
admirers have promised not only an eternal 
reward, but such immortality as the world has 
to bestow. Overburdened as we are by the 
ever-increasing debt of admiration to the illus¬ 
trious dead, these promises will hardly be ful¬ 
filled, at least by our busy age: nor is it easy 
even for one who has carefully travelled through 
the whole of these biographies, to select from 
among the female candidates for posthumous 
renown, those to whom such homage is espe¬ 
cially due. Their portraitures have a strong 
resemblance to each other. To each, in her 
turn, is awarded the praise of passive virtue, 
of fervent piety, and of austerities from which 
nature shrinks. If a sense of the ludicrous 
will occasionally provoke a passive smile, or 
if a sigh must now and then be given to the 
melancholy superstitions of which they were 
the blameless victims, it is at least impossible 
to contemplate, irreverently or unmoved, th'e 
image of purity and peace, of mutual kindness, 
and cheerful acquiescence in the Divine will, 
which discloses itself at each successive aspect 
of that holy sisterhood. 

The sternest Protestant cannot rouse him¬ 
self at once from the influence of this course 
of reading: nor resume with an effort his con¬ 
viction, that it is amidst the charities of do*- 
mestic life that female virtue finds the highest 
exercise, and female piety the most sublime 
elevation. He knows, indeed, that exuberant 
as is the charter of his faith in models of-every 
human virtue, and in precepts of wisdom 
under every varied form, it contains not so 
much as a single example, or a solitary admo¬ 
nition, from which the confessors of Port- 
Royal could have shown that a retreat to such 
cloisters was in accordance with the revealed 
will of God. He knows also, that thus to coun¬ 
teract the eternal laws of nature, and the. ma¬ 
nifest designs of Providence, must be folly. 







116 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


however specious the pretext or solemn the 
guise which such folly may assume. He is 
assured that filial affection, cheerfully, tempe¬ 
rately, bountifully, and thankfully using the 
gifts of Heaven, is the best tribute which man 
can render to Him who claims for himself the 
name and the character of a Father. But with 
all this knowledge, the disciple of Luther or 
of Calvin will yet close the vies cdijicates and 
the 'necrologies of these holy women, not with¬ 
out a reluctance to doubt, and a wish to be¬ 
lieve, that they really occupied the high and 
awful station to which they aspired ; and stood 
apart from the world, its pollutions, and its 
cares, to offer with purer hearts than others, 
and with more acceptable intercessions, the 
sacrifice of an uninterrupted worship, replete 
with blessings to themselves and to mankind. 
Peace then to their errors, and unquoted be 
any of the innumerable extravagances which 
abound in the records of their lives. To the 
recluses' who shared, without ever breaking 
their solitude, we rather turn for illustrations 
of the spirit which animated and characterized 
the valley of Port-Royal. 

On the pacification of- Clement IX., Louis 
Sebastian le Nain de Tillemont, who had been 
educated in the schools of Nicole and Lancelot, 
returned in the maturity of his manhood to a 
hermitage which he had erected near the court¬ 
yard of the abbey. Such had been his attain¬ 
ments as a boy, that the pupil had soon 
exhausted the resources of those profound 
teachers, and in his twentieth year had com¬ 
menced those works on ecclesiastical history, 
which have placed him in the very foremost 
rank, if not at the head, of all who have la¬ 
boured in that fertile though rugged field. To 
the culture of it, his life was unceasingly de¬ 
voted. Though under the direction of De Saci 
he had obtained admission to holy orders, he 
refused all the rich preferments pressed on 
him by the admirers of his genius. Year after 
year passed over him, unmarked by any event 
which even the pen of his affectionate biogra¬ 
pher, Fontaine, could record. “He lived,” 
says that amiable writer, “alone, and with no 
witness but God himself, who was ever present 
with him, and who was all in all to him.” It 
was only in an habitual and placid communion 
with that one associate, that he sought relief 
from his gigantic toils; and with a spirit re¬ 
cruited by that communion, he returned to the 
society of the emperors, the popes, the fathers, 
and the saints, who were to him as companions 
and as friends. To a man long conversant 
with the anxieties of a secular calling, the soft 
lights and the harmonious repose of such a 
picture may perhaps exhibit a delusive aspect; 
yet it can hardly be a delusion to believe, that 
for such colloquy with the minds which yet 
live in books, and with that Mind which is the 
source of all life, would be well exchanged 
whatever ambition, society, fame, or fortune, 
have to confer on their most favoured votaries. 

So at least judged one, whom fame and for¬ 
tune wooed with their most alluring smiles. 
Racine had been trained at Port-Royal, in*the 
same schools and by the same masters as Til¬ 
lemont. For the great dramatist, no sympathy 


could of course be expressed by the austere 
dwellers in the desert; and perhaps the friend¬ 
ship of Boileau may have consoled him for the 
alienation of his old teacher Nicole. But when, 
in his visionnaires, that devout and learned man 
denounced the writers of stage-plays as the 
Empoisonneurspublics dcs ames, Racine keenly 
felt and resented the reproach. Like most con¬ 
troversialists, he lived to repent the asperity 
of his language: but his repentance yielded 
fruits, the like of which have rarely been 
gathered from that bitter stem. The author 
of Andromaque not only sought the pardon, 
and regained the friendship of Arnauld and 
Nicole, but actually renounced the drama, ex¬ 
horted his son to abandon poetry, and became 
the advocate and the historian of Port-Royal, 
and secured for his bones a resting-place in 
that consecrated soil. Happily for the world, 
a method was afterwards discovered of recon¬ 
ciling the exercise of Racine’s genius with the 
severe principles which Nicole had instilled 
into him when a boy, and had revived with 
such decisive effect in his riper days. Esther 
and Athalie were allowed, even at Port-Royal, 
to be works not unseemly for a man whose 
single talent was that of writing verses, and 
who, if he could do nothing better, was at least 
acknowledged to do that well. But alas for 
human consistency! die who traced those 
majestic scenes where reliance on the Divine 
arm triumphs over all human regards and ter¬ 
rors, was doomed himself to pine away and to 
die of a hard saying of the hard master it was 
his ill fate to serve. His guilt was to have 
drawn up a Memoir on the means of relieving 
the starving poor at Paris. His punishment, 
the indignant exclamation of the great Louis, 
“ Because he is an all-accomplished versifier, 
does he presume that he knows every thing] 
Because he is a great poet, does he mean to 
become a minister!” Well might the sensi¬ 
tive spirit which such a feather could crush, 
wish with Wolsey that he had served his God 
as faithfully as his king, and repine amidst the 
pageantries of Versailles for the devout com¬ 
posure of Port-Royal. 

And many were the eminent men who sought 
and enjoyed that repose. There dwelt the 
Prince de Conti, one of the heroes- of the 
Fronde, and still more memorable for his pe¬ 
nitence and restitutions; of whom it is record¬ 
ed, that his young children were so impressed 
by his absolute devotedness to the Divine will, 
as to conceal from him the story of Abraham, 
lest the example of the sacrifice of Isaac should 
be imitated at their own expense. There, too, 
resided the Due de Laincourt, on whom for¬ 
tune had exhausted all her bounties, and who, 
under the loss of them all, rose to the utmost 
heroism of a meek, unrepining, and cheerful 
resignation. Pontchateau, a noble, a courtier, 
an ambassador, and at length the apostolical 
prothonotary at Rome, brought all the strange 
vicissitudes of his life to an end, by becoming, 
under the name of Le Mercier, a common la¬ 
bourer in the gardens, and a devout worship¬ 
per in the church of Port-Royal. But this 
chronicle of worthies, spreading out into an 
interminable length, must give place to a very 





THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 


117 


brief account of the events which reduced to 
a desert the solitudes which they had culti¬ 
vated and adorned. 

Amidst the contentions of the Gallican 
church, full proof had been given of the keen 
edge of those weapons which might be bor¬ 
rowed from the papal arsenals. It readily oc¬ 
curred to the stifferers, that the resource which 
the Jesuits had so successfully employed, might 
be turned against themselves. Pascal had 
startled the civilized world with the exposure 
of Molinist errors, hostile not merely to the 
Catholic creed, but to those principles of virtue 
which are the very cement of human society. 
They had imputed to Jansenius five heresies 
on the obscure subjects of divine grace and 
human freedom; but who could number the 
propositions in which Escobar and his asso¬ 
ciates had spurned the authority of the deca¬ 
logue itself? The assiduity of the bishops of 
Arras and St. Pons collected sixty-five of these 
scandalous dogmas, and these they transmitted 
to Rome in 'a memorial of which Nicole was 
believed to be the writer, and known to be the 
translator. Righteous, unqualified, and deci¬ 
sive was the papal condemnation of the mo¬ 
rality of the Jesuits; but fatal to the repose of 
Port-Royal was the triumph of one of her 
brightest ornaments. The duchesse de Longue- 
ville had lately died, and with her had disap¬ 
peared the motive which had induced Louis to 
show some forbearance to the objects of her 
affectionate solicitude. Harlai now governed 
the see of Paris. He was a man of disreputa¬ 
ble character, and the mere instrument of the 
king. Louis was in bondage to Madame de 
Maintenon, and she to the Jesuits. Their ven¬ 
geance scarcely sought a pretext, and soon 
found its gratification. 

In the exercise of his archiepiscopal autho¬ 
rity, Harlai banished De Saci, Tillemont, and 
Pontchateau, from the valley of Port-Royal. 
Nicole and Arnauld sought shelter in the 
Netherlands from his menaces. The postu- 
lantes and scholars were once more expelled, 
and the admission of novices was again 
forbidden. 

At this epoch, another lady of the house of 
Arnauld—a cousin and namesake of the Mere 
Angelique—was invested with the dignity of 
abbess. Her genius, her virtue, and her learn¬ 
ing, are the subject of eulogies too indistinct 
to be impressive, and too hyperbolical to win 
implicit credence. Yet, if she was the writer 
of the memoir in defence of her monastery 
which bears her name, there was no apparent 
obstacle, but her sex and her profession, to her 
successful rivalry of the greatest masters of 
juridical eloquence in France. Ineffectual, 
however, would have been all the rhetoric 
which ever adorned the parliament of Paris, to 
avert the threatened doom of the stronghold 
of Jansenism. As he approached the tomb, 
Harlai’s resentment became more deep and 
settled. He left it a fatal inheritance to his 
successor, the cardinal de Noailles. A weak 
and obstinate, but not unfeeling man, De 
Noailles owed his promotion to the see of Paris 
to his fixed hostility to Port-Royal, and his 
known willingness to hazard the odium of sub¬ 


verting that ancient seat of piety and learning. 
The apology soon presented itself. 

Several years had elapsed since the dispute 
about “Le Droit et le Fait de Jansenius” had 
apparently reached its close. Revolving this 
passage of by-gone history, a priest had im¬ 
proved or amused his leisure, by drawing up, 
for the decision of the Sorbonne, “ a case of 
conscience,” v r hich, it must be owned, was a 
hard problem for the most expert casuist. Of 
two infallible popes, one had with his dying 
breath affirmed, as a momentous truth, a pre¬ 
position, which the other had abandoned, if 
not retracted. What was it the duty of the 
faithful to believe on the subject? Forty doc¬ 
tors answered, that it was enough to maintain 
a respectful silence as to the “ fait de Jansen¬ 
ius.” Archiepiscopal mandaments, treatises 
of the learned, royal orders in council, and 
parliamentary arrets flew thick and fast through 
the troubled air, and obscured the daylight of 
common sense. Again the eldest son of the 
church invoked the authority of her spiritual 
father. 

In oracular darkness went forth from the 
Vatican, the sentence, that “ respectful silence 
is not a sufficient deference for apostolical con¬ 
stitutions.” This is what is called, in ecclesi¬ 
astical story, the bull “ Vineam Domini Sa- 
baoth.” Under shelter of an abstract theorem 
which no Catholic could deny, it ingeniously 
concealed the conflict of opinion of two infalli¬ 
ble pontiffs. Subscription of their unqualified 
assent to the bull “ Vineam” was demanded 
from the nuns of Port-Royal, and from them 
alone. The}'- cheerfully subscribed; but with 
the addition, that their signature was not to be 
understood as derogating from what had been 
determined on the pacification of Clement IX. 
This was their final and their fatal act of con¬ 
tumacy. Decree after decree v r as fulminated 
by De Noailles. He forbade the admission of 
any new members of their house. He pro¬ 
hibited the election of an abbess. He despoiled 
them of a large part of their estates. He in¬ 
terdicted to them all the sacraments of the 
church. He obtained a papal bull for the 
suppression of their monastery; and, in October, 
1709, he carried it into effect by an armed force, 
under the Marquis D’Argenson. 

There is in Westminster Hall a tradition 
that an eminent advocate of our own times, ad¬ 
dressed to the House of Peers during sixteen 
successive days a speech, in the course of 
which (such is the calculation) he employed 
all the words in Johnson’s Dictionary, one with 
another, just thirty-five times over. Neither 
boasting the copiousness, nor presuming on 
the patience which were at the command of 
that great law r yer, we have compressed. into 
a few sentences the history of a contest, which, 
if not so abridged, would have swollen to the 
utmost limits of that unparalleled oration. 
But to those who have leisure for such studies, 
and who delight in a well-fought forensic field, 
we can promise that pleasure in the highest 
degree from a perusal of the contest between 
the aged ladies of Port-Royal, and their royal, 
mitred, and ermined antagonists. Never was 
a more gallant struggle against injustice. 




STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS 


After exhausting all the resources of legal de¬ 
fence, those helpless and apparently feeble 
women disputed every inch of ground by pro¬ 
tests, remonstrances, and petitions, which, for 
the moment at least, held their assailants in 
check, and which yet remain a wondrous mon¬ 
ument of their perseverance and capacity, 
and of the absolute self-control which, amidst 
the outpourings of their griefs, and the expo¬ 
sure of their wrongs, restrained every expres¬ 
sion of asperity or resentment. Never was 
the genius of the family of Arnauld exhibited 
with greater lustre, and never with less effect. 

In a gray autumnal morning, a long file of 
armed horsemen, under the command of 
D’Argenson, was seen to issue from the woods 
which overhung the ill-fitted monastery. In 
the name of Louis he demanded and obtained 
admission into that sacred enclosure. Seated 
on the abbatial throne, he summoned the nuns 
into his presence. They appeared before him 
veiled, silent, and submissive. Their papers, 
their title-deeds, and their property were then 
seized, and proclamation made of a royal de¬ 
cree which directed their immediate exile. It 
was instantly carried into effect. Far and 
wide, along the summits of the neighbouring 
hills, might be seen a thronging multitude of 
the peasants whom they had instructed, and of 
the poor whom they had relieved. Bitter cries 
of indignation and of grief, joined with fervent 
prayers, arose from these helpless people, as, 
one after another, the nuns entered the car¬ 
riages drawn up for their reception. Each 
pursued her solitary journey to the prison 
destined for her. Of these venerable women, 
some had passed their eightieth year, and the 
3 r oungest was far advanced in life. Labouring 
under paralysis and other infirmities of old 
age, several of them reached at once their 
prisons and their graves. Others died under 
the distress and fatigues of their journey. 
Some possessed energies which no sufferings 
could subdue. Madame de Remicourt, for ex¬ 
ample, was kept for two years in solitary con¬ 
finement; in a cell lighted and ventilated only 
through the chimney; without fire, society, or 
books. “You may persecute, but you will 
never change Madame de Remicourt,” said the 
archbishop; “for” (such was his profound 
view of the phenomenon) “ she has a square 
head, and people with square heads are always 
obstinate.” Last in the number of exiles ap¬ 
peared at the gates of the abbey, the prioress 
Louise de St. Anastasie Mesnil de Courtiaux. 
She had seen her aged sisters one by one quit 
for ever the abode, the associates, and the em¬ 
ployments of their lives. To each she had 
given her parting benediction. She shed no 
tear, she breathed no murmur, nor for a mo¬ 
ment betrayed the dignity of her.office, or the 
constancy of her mind. “Be faithful to the 
end,” were the last words which she addressed 
to the last companion of her sorrows. And 
nobly did she fulfil her own counsels. She 
was conducted to a convent, where, under a 
close guard, she was compelled to endure the 
utmost rigours of a jail. Deprived of all those 
religious comforts which it is in the power of 
man to minister, she enjoyed a solace, and 
found a strength, which it was not in the 


power of man to take away. In common with 
the greater part of her fellow-sufferers, she 
died with no priestly absolution, and was con¬ 
signed to an unhallowed grave. They died 
the martyrs of sincerity; strong in the faith 
that a lie must ever be hateful in the sight of 
God, though infallible popes should exact it, 
or an infallible church, as represented by car¬ 
dinals and confessors, should persuade it. 

Unsatiated by the calamities of the nuns, 
the vengeance of the enemies of Port-Royal 
was directed against the buildings where they 
had dwelt, the sacred edifice where they had 
worshipped, and the tombs in which their dead 
had been interred. The monastery and the 
adjacent church were overthrown from their 
foundations. Workmen, prepared by hard 
drinking for their task, broke open the graves 
in which the nuns and recluses of former 
times had been interred. With obscene ribaldry, 
and outrages too disgusting to be detailed, they 
piled up a loathsome heap of bones and 
corpses, on which the dogs were permitted to 
feed. What remained was thrown into a pit, 
prepared for the purpose, near the neighbour¬ 
ing church-yard of St. Lambert. 

A wooden cross, erected by the villagers, 
marked the spot where many a pilgrim resorted 
to pray for the souls of the departed, and for 
his own. At length no trace remained of the 
fortress of Jansenism to offend the eye of the 
Jesuits, or to perpetuate the memory of the 
illustrious dead with whom they had so long 
contended. The solitary Gothic arch, the 
water-mill, and the dovecot, rising from the 
banks of the pool, with the decayed towers and 
the farmhouse on the slopes of the valley, are 
all that now attest that it was once the crowded 
abode of the wise, the learned, and the good. 
In that spot, however, may still be seen the 
winding brook, the verdant hills, and the quiet 
meadows, nature's indestructible monuments 
to the devout men and holy women who 
nurtured there affections which made them 
lovely in their lives, and hopes which rendered 
them triumphant in death. Nor in her long 
roll of martyrs has history to record the names 
of any who suffered with greater constancy, or 
in a nobler cause; for their conflict was with 
the very church they most profoundly revered, 
and their cause was that of devotedness to sin¬ 
cerity and the abhorrence of falsehood. 

Amongst the interpreters of the counsels of 
Divine Providence in that age, there were not 
wanting many who found, in the calamities 
which overwhelmed the declining years of 
Louis, the retribution of an avenging Deity 
for the wrongs inflicte-d on Port-Royal. If it 
were given to man to decipher the mysterious 
characters engraven on the scroll of this 
world’s history, it might not be difficult to find, 
in the annals of his reign, other and yet more 
weighty reasons for the awakening of Nemesis 
in France at the commencement of the 
eighteenth century. But of the mere chrono¬ 
logical fact, there is no doubt. The details of 
the three Dauphins, and the victories of Eugene 
and Marlborough, followed hard on the disper¬ 
sion of the nuns. With his dying breath, 
Louis cast the responsibility on the Jesuits 
who stood round his bed.. “If, indeed, v 0 u 




THE PORT-ROYALISTS. 


119 


hav©jmisled and deceived me”—such was his 
Iasi address to his confessors—“ you are deeply 
guilty, for in truth I acted in good faith. I 
sincerely sought the peace of the church.” 
l’he humiliation of his spiritual advisers 
quickly followed. It was preceded by the re¬ 
tirement and death of Madame de Maintenon, 
who had both provoked and derided the suffer¬ 
ings of the Port-Royalists. The very type of 
mediocrity out of jdace, she is to our mind 
the least winning of all the ladies of equivocal 
or desperate reputation who in modern times 
have stood on the steps of European thrones. 
Her power was sustained by the feebleness of 
the mind she had subdued, and by the crafti¬ 
ness of those who had subjugated her own. 
Her prudery and her religiousness, such as it 
was, served but to deepen the aversion which 
her intriguing, selfish, narrow-minded, and 
bigoted spirit excite and justify; although, in 
her own view of the matter, she probably 
hoped to propitiate the favour of Heaven and 
the applause of the world, by directing against 
the unoffending women of Port-Royal the 
deadly wrath of the worn-out debauchee, whose 
jaded spirits and unquiet conscience it was 
her daily task to sustain and flatter. De 
Noailles, the instrument of her cruelty, lived 
to bewail his guilt with such strange agonies 
of remorse as to rescue his memory from all 
feelings of hatred, although it is difficult to 
contemplate without some failure of respect, 
the exhibition of emotions, which, however 
just in themselves, deprived their victim of all 
powers'of self-control, and of every semblance 
of decorous composure. His howlings are 
described by the witness of them, to have been 
more like those of a wild beast or a maniac, 
than of a reasonable man. 

If these slight notices of the heroes and 
heroines of Port-Royal, (slight indeed, when 
compared with the original materials from 
which they have been drawn,) should be as¬ 
cribed by any one to a pen plighted to do suit 
and service to the cause of Rome, no surmise 
could be wider of the mark. No Protestant 
can read the writings of the Port-Royalists 
themselves, without gratitude for his deliver¬ 
ance from the superstitions of a church which 
calls herself Catholic, and boasts that she is 
eternal. That the Church of Rome may flourish 
as long as the race of man shall endure, is in¬ 
deed a conclusion which may reasonably be 
adopted by him who divines the future only 
from the past. For where is the land, or what 
the historical period, in which a conspicuous 
place has not been held by phenomena essen¬ 
tially the same, however circumstantially dif¬ 
ferent! In what age has man not been a 
worshipper of the visible! In what country 
has imagination—the sensuous property of the 
mind—failed to triumph over those mental 
powers which are purely contemplative! Who 
can discover a period in which religion has 
not more or less assumed the form of a com¬ 
promise between the self-dependence and the 
self-distrust of her votaries—between their 
abasement to human authority and their con¬ 
viction of its worthlessness—between their 
awe of the divine power and their habitual re¬ 
volt against the divine will! Of every such 


compromise, the indications have been the 
same—a worshipper of pomp and ceremonial, 
a spiritual despotism exercised by a sacerdotal 
caste, bodily penances and costly expiations, 
and the constant intervention of man, and of 
the works of man, between the worshipper 
and the supreme object of his worship. So 
long as human nature shall continue what it 
is, the religion of human nature will be un- 
changed. The Church of Rome Will be 
eternal, if man, such as he now is, is himself 
eternal. 

But for every labour under the sun, says the 
Wise Man, there is a time. There is a time 
for bearing testimony against the errors of 
Rome, why not also a time for testifying to the 
sublime virtues with which those errors have 
been so often associated! Are we for ever to 
admit and never to practise the duties of kind¬ 
ness and mutual forbearance ! Does Christi¬ 
anity consist in a vivid perception of the faults, 
and an obtuse blindness to the merits of those 
who differ from us! Is charity a virtue only 
when we ourselves are the objects of it! Is 
there not a church as pure and more catholic 
than those of Oxford or Rome—a church com 
prehending within its limits every human being 
who, according do the measure of the know¬ 
ledge placed within his reach, strives habitu¬ 
ally to be conformed to the will of the common 
Father of us all! To indulge hope beyond the 
pale of some narrow communion, has, by each 
Christian society in its turn, been denounced 
as a daring presumption. • Yet the hope has 
come to all, and with her faith and charity, 
her inseparable companions. Amidst the shock 
of contending creeds, and the uproar of anathe¬ 
mas, they who have ears to hear, and hearts 
to understand, have listened to gentler and 
more kindly sounds. Good men may debate 
as polemics, but they wall feel as Christians. 
On the universal mind of Christendom is inde¬ 
libly engraven one image, towards which the 
eyes of all are more or less earnestly directed. 
Whoever has himself caught any resemblance, 
however faint and imperfect, to that divine and 
benignant Original, has in his measure learned 
to recognise a brother wherever he can dis¬ 
cern the same resemblance.* 

There is an essential unity in that kingdom 
which is not of this world. But within the 
provinces of that mighty state there is room 
for endless varieties of administration, and for 
local law r s and customs widely differing from 
each other The unity consists in the one ob¬ 
ject of "worship—the one object of affiance— 
the one source of virtue—the one cementing 
principle of mutual love, which pervade and 
animate the whole. The diversities are, and 
must be, as numerous and intractable as are 
the essential distinctions which nature, habit, 
and circumstances have created amongst men. 
Uniformity of creeds, of discipline, of ritual, 
and of ceremonies, in such a w r orld as ours !— 

* See on this subject a book entitled “ Catholic Chris¬ 
tianity,” the anonymous work of the Rev. E. M’Vicar, 
now a minister of the Church of Scotland in Ceylon. 
Why Buch a book should not have attained an cxten 
sive celebrity, or why such a writer should have been 
permitted to quit his native land, are questions to 
which we fear no satisfactory answer could be given 
by the dispensers of fame or of church prefer^jp 




120 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


a world where no two men are not as distin¬ 
guishable in their mental as in their physical 
aspect; where every petty community has its 
separate system of civil government; where 
all that meets the eye, and all that arrests the 
ear, has the stamp of boundless and infinite 
variety! What are the harmonies of tone, of 
colour, and of form, but the result of contrasts 
—of contrasts held in subordination to one 
pervading principle, which reconciles without 
confounding the component elements of the 
music, the painting, or the structure? In the 
physical w r orks of God, beauty could have no 
existence without endless diversities. Why 
assume that in religious society—a work not 
less surely to be ascribed to the supreme 
author of all things—this law is absolutely 
reversed? Were it possible to subdue that 
innate tendency of the human mind, which 
compels men to differ in religious opinions 
and observances, at least as widely as on all 
other subjects, what would be the results of 
such a triumph ? Where would then be the 
free comparison, and the continual enlarge¬ 
ment of thought; where the self-distrusts which 
are the springs of humility, or the mutual de¬ 
pendencies which are the bonds of love? He 
who made us with this infinite variety in our 
intellectual and physical constitution, must 
have foreseen, and foreseeing, must have in¬ 
tended, a corresponding dissimilarity in the 
opinions of his creatures on all questions sub¬ 
mitted to their judgment, and proposed for 
their acceptance. For truth is his law; and 
if all will profess to think alike, all must live 
in the habitual violation of it. 

Zeal for uniformity attests the latent dis¬ 
trusts, not the firm convictions of the zealot. 
In proportion to the strength of our self-reli¬ 
ance, is our indifference to the multiplication 
of suffrages in favour of our own judgment. 


Our minds are steeped in imagery; and where 
the visible form is not, the impalpable spirit 
escapes the notice of the unreflecting multi¬ 
tude. In common hands, analysis stops at the 
species or the genus, and cannot rise to the 
order or the class. To distinguish birds from 
fishes, beasts from insects, limits the efforts of 
the vulgar observer of the face of nature. But 
Cuvier could trace the sublime unity, the uni¬ 
versal type, the fontal Idea existing in the 
creative intelligence, which connects as one 
the mammoth and the snail. So, common ob¬ 
servers can distinguish from each other the 
different varieties of religious society, and can 
rise no higher. Where one assembly worships 
with harmonies of music, fumes of incense, 
ancient liturgies, and a gorgeous ceremonial, 
and another listens to the unaided voice of a 
single pastor, they can perceive and record 
the differences; but the hidden ties which 
unite them both escape such observation. All 
appears as contrast, and all ministers to anti¬ 
pathy and discord. It is our belief that these 
things may be rightly viewed in a different 
aspect, and yet with the most severe confor¬ 
mity to the divine will, whether as intimated 
by natural religion, or as revealed in holy 
scripture. We believe that, in the judgment 
of an enlightened charity, many Christian so¬ 
cieties, who are accustomed to denounce each 
other’s errors, will at length come to be re¬ 
garded as members in common of the one 
great and comprehensive church, in which 
diversities of forms are harmonized by an all- 
pervading unity of spirit. For ourselves, at 
least, we should deeply regret to conclude that 
we were aliens from that great Christian com¬ 
monwealth of which the nuns and recluses 
of the valley of Port-Royal were members, 
and members assuredly of no common excel¬ 
lence. 


IGNATIUS LOYOLA AND HIS ASSOCIATES.* 

[Edinburgh Review, 1842.] 


Ox the dawn of the day which, in the year 
1534, the Church of Rome celebrated the feast 
of the Assumption of Our Blessed Lady, a little 
company of men, whose vestments bespoke 
their religious character, emerged in solemn 
procession from the deep shadows cast by the 
towers of Notre Danqe over the silent city 
below them. In a silence not less profound, 
except when broken by the chant of the matins 
appropriate to that sacred season, they climbed 
the hill of martyrs, and descended into the 
crypt, which then ascertained the spot where 
the apostle of France had won the crown of 


* Exercitia S])lrltualla S. P. Ignatii Loyola ;, cum Ver- 
sione literali ex Autographo Jlispanico prxmittuntur R. 
P. Joannis Roothmen, prapositi Generalis Societatis, 
Jesu , Literx EncycUx ad Patres et Fratres cjusdem So- 
cietatis, de Spiritualium Exercitiorum S. P, JV*, Studio et 
Usu. Londini, typis C. Richards. 1837. 


martyrdom. With a stately though halting 
gait, as one accustomed to military command, 
marched at their head a man of swarthy com¬ 
plexion, bald-headed and of middle stature, 
who had passed the meridian of life: his deep- 
set eyes glowing as with a perennial fire, from 
beneath brows, which, had phrenology then 
been born, she might have portrayed in her 
loftiest style, but which, without her aid, an¬ 
nounced a commission from on high to subju¬ 
gate and to rule mankind. So majestic, indeed, 
was the aspect of Ignatius Loyola, that, during 
the sixteenth century few, if any of the books 
of his order appeared without the impress of 
that imperial countenance. Beside him in the 
chapel of St. Denys knelt another worshipper, 
whose manly bearing, buoyant step, clear blue 
eye, and finely-chiseled features, contrasted 
strangely with the solemnities in which he was 








IGNATIUS LOYOLA AND HIS ASSOCIATES. 


engaged. Then in early manhood, Francis 
Xavier united in his person the dignity befit¬ 
ting his birth as a grandee of Spain, and the 
grace which should adorn a page of the queen 
of Castile and Arragon. Not less incongruous 
with the scene in which they bore their parts, 
were the slight forms of the boy Alphonso Sal- 
meron and of his bosom friend Jaygo Laynez, 
the destined successor of Ignatius in his spirit¬ 
ual dynasty. With them Nicholas Alphonso 
Bobadilla, and Simon Rodriguez—the first a 
teacher, the second a student of philosophy- 
prostrated themselves before the altar, where 
ministered Peter Faber, once a shepherd in 
the mountains of Savoy, but now a priest in 
holy orders. By his hands was distributed to 
his associates the seeming bread, over which 
he had uttered words of more than miraculous 
efficacy; and then were lifted up their united 
voices, uttering, in low but distinct articula¬ 
tion, an oath, at the deep significance of which 
the nations might have trembled or rejoiced. 
Never did human lips pronounce a vow more 
religiously observed, or pregnant with results 
more momentous. 

Descended from an illustrious family, Tgna- 
tius had in his youth been a courtier and a 
cavalier, and if not a poet at least a cultivator 
of poetry. At the siege of Pampeluna his leg 
was broken, and, after the failure of mere vul¬ 
gar leeches, was set by a touch from the hand 
of the prince of apostles. Yet St. Peter’s the¬ 
rapeutic skill was less perfect than might have 
been expected from so exalted a chirurgeon; 
for a splinter still protruded through the skin, 
and the limb was shrunk and shortened. To 
regain his fair proportions, Ignatius had him¬ 
self literally stretched on the rack; and ex¬ 
piated, by a long confinement to his couch, 
this singular experiment to reduce his refrac¬ 
tory bones and sinews. Books of knight- 
errantry relieved the lassitude of sickmess,and, 
when these were exhausted, he betook him¬ 
self to a series of still more marvellous ro¬ 
mances. Tn the legends of the Saints the 
disabled soldier discovered a new field of 
emulation and of glory. Compared with their 
self-conquests and their high rewards, the 
achievements and the renown of Roland and 
of Amadis waxed dim. Compared with the 
peerless damsels for whose smiles Paladins 
had fought and died, how transcendently glo¬ 
rious the image of feminine loveliness and 
angelic purity which had irradiated the her¬ 
mit’s cell and the path of the wayworn pil¬ 
grims ! Far as the heavens are above the 
earth would be the plighted fealty of the knight 
of the Virgin mother beyond the noblest devo¬ 
tion of mere human chivalry. In her service 
he would cast his shield over the church which 
ascribed to her more than celestial dignities; 
and bathe in the blood of her enemies the 
sword once desecrated to the mean ends of 
worldly ambition. Nor were these vows un¬ 
heeded by her to whom they were addressed. 
Environed in light, and clasping her infant to 
her bosom, she revealed herself to the adoring 
gaze of her champion. At t that heavenly 
vision, all fantasies of worldly and sensual 
delight, like exorcised demons, fled from his 
soul into an eternal exile. He rose, suspended 
16 


at her shrine his secular weapons, performed 
there his nocturnal vigils, and with returning 
day retired to consecrate his future life to the 
glory of the Virgo Deipara. 

To these erotic dreams succeeded stern reali¬ 
ties ; convulsive agonies of prayer, wailings of 
remorse, and self-inflicted bodily torments. Ex¬ 
changing dresses with a beggar, he lined his 
gaberdine with prickly thorns, fasted to the 
verge of starvation, assumed the demeanour 
of an idiot, became too loathsome for human 
contact, and then, plunging into a gloomy ca¬ 
vern, surrendered himself up to such wrest¬ 
lings with the evil spirit, and to such vicissi¬ 
tudes of rapture and despair, that in the storm 
of turbid passions his reason had nearly given 
way. Friendly hands dragged him from his 
hiding-place; and hands, in intention at least, 
not less friendly, recorded his feverish ravings. 
At one time he conversed with voices audible 
to no ear but his; at another, he sought to pro¬ 
pitiate him before whom he trembled, by expia¬ 
tions which would have been more fitly offered 
to Moloch. Spiritual doctors ministered to his 
relief, but they prescribed in vain. Too simple 
for their subtilized perception was the simple 
truth, that in revealing himself to mankind in 
the character of a father, that awful Being 
has claimed as peculiarly his own the gentlest, 
the kindest, and the most confiding affections 
of our nature. 

At the verge of madness Ignatius paused. 
That noble intellect was n<f( to be whelmed 
beneath the tempests in which so many have 
sunk, nor was his deliverance to be accom¬ 
plished by any vulgar methods. Standing on 
the steps of a Dominican church he recited 
the office of Our Lady, when suddenly heaven 
itself was laid open to the eye of the worship¬ 
per. That ineffable mystery, which the author 
of the Athanasian creed has laboured to enun¬ 
ciate in words, was disclosed to him as an 
object not of faith but of actual sight. The past 
ages of the world were rolled back in his pre¬ 
sence, and he beheld the material fabric of 
things rising into being, and perceived the mo¬ 
tives which had prompted the exercise of the 
creative energy. To his spiritualized sense 
was disclosed the actual process by which the 
host is transubstantiated; and the other Chris¬ 
tian verities which it is permitted to common 
men to receive but as exercises of their belief, 
now became to him the objects of immediate 
inspection and of direct consciousness. For 
eight successive days his body reposed in an 
unbroken trance; while his spirit thus imbibed 
disclosures for which the tongues of men have 
no appropriate language. In a volume of four¬ 
score leaves he attempted indeed to impart 
them; but, dark with excess of light,his words 
held the learned and the ignorant alike in 
speechless wonder. 

Ignatius returned to this sublunary scene 
with a mission not unmeet for an envoy from 
the empyrean world, of which he had thus be¬ 
come a temporary denizen. He returned to 
establish on earth a theocracy, of which he 
should himself be the first administrator, and 
to which every tribe and kindred of men should 
be subject. He returned no longer a sordid 
half-distracted anchorite, but, strange to tell, a 
L 




122 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


man distinguished not more by the gigantic 
magnitude of his designs, than by the clear 
good sense, the profound sagacity, the calm 
perseverance, and the flexible address with 
which he was to pursue them. History affords 
no more perfect illustration how readily deliri¬ 
ous enthusiasm and the shrewdness of the ex¬ 
change may combine and harmonize in minds 
of the heroic order. A Swedenborg-Franklin, 
reconciling in himself these antagonist pro¬ 
pensities, is no monster of the fancy. 

On his restoration to human society, Ignatius 
reappeared in the garb, and addressed himself 
to the occupations of other religious men. 
The first fruits-of his labours was the book of 
which we have transcribed the title-page. It 
was originally written in Spanish, and appeared 
in an inaccurate Latin version. By the order 
of the present pope, Loyola’s manuscript, still 
remaining in the Vatican, has been again 
translated. In this new form the book is com¬ 
mended to the devout study of the faithful by a 
bull of Pope Paul III., .and by an encyclical 
epistle from the present general of the order of 
Jesus. To so august a sanction, slight indeed 
is the aid which can be given by the suffrage 
of northern heretics. Yet on this subject the 
chair of Knox, if now filled by himself, would 
not be very widely at variance with the throne 
of St. Peter. The “Spiritual Exercises” form 
a manual of what may be called “ the act of 
conversion.” It proposes a scheme of self- 
discipline by which, in the course of four 
weeks, that mighty work is to be accomplished. 
In the first, the penitent is conducted through 
a series of dark retrospects to abase, and of 
gloomy prospects to alarm him. These ends 
obtained, he is during the next seven days to 
enrol himself—such is the military style of the 
book—in the army of the faithful, studying 
the sacred biography of the Divine Leader of 
that elect host, and choosing with extreme 
caution the plan of life, religious or secular, in 
which he may be best able to tread in his 
steps, and to bear the standard emblematic at 
once of suffering and of conquest. To sustain 
the soldier of the cross in this protracted v r ar- 
fare, his spiritual eye is, during the third of 
his solitary weeks, to be fixed in a reverential 
scrutiny into that unfathomable abyss of wo, 
into which a descent was once made to rescue 
the race of Adam from the grasp of their mor¬ 
tal enemies; and then seven suns are to rise 
and set while the still secluded but now disen¬ 
thralled spirit is to chant triumphant hallelu¬ 
jahs, elevating her desires heavenward, con¬ 
templating glories hitherto unimaginable, and 
mysteries never before revealed; till the sacred 
exercises close with an absolute surrender of 
all the joys and interests of this sublunary 
state, as a holocaust, to be consumed by the 
undying flame of divine love on the altar of 
the regenerate heart. 

He must have been deeply read in the na¬ 
ture of man, who should have predicted such 
first fruits as these from the restored health of 
the distracted visionary, who had alternately 
sounded the base strings of humility on earth, 
and the living chords which vibrate with 
spontaneous harmonies along the seventh 
heavens, A closer survey of the book will 


but enhance the wonder. To transmute pro¬ 
fligates into converts, by a process of which, 
during any one of her revolutions round our 
planet, the moon is to witness the commence¬ 
ment and the close, might perhaps seem like a 
plagiarism from the academies of Laputa. 
But in his great, and indeed his only extant 
work, Ignatius Loyola is no dreamer. By 
force of an instinct with which such minds as 
his alone are gifted, he could assume the cha¬ 
racter to which the shrewd, the practical, and 
the worldly-wise aspire, even when abandoning 
himself to ecstasies which they are alike un¬ 
able to comprehend or to endure. His mind 
resembled the body of his great disciple, 
Francis Xavier, which, as he preached or 
baptized, rose majestically towards the skies, 
while his feet (the pious curiosity of his hear¬ 
ers ascertained the fact,) retained their firm 
hold on the earth below. If the spiritual exer¬ 
cises were designed to excite, they were not 
less intended to control and to regulate, reli¬ 
gious sensibilities. To exalt the spirit above 
terrestrial objects was scarcely more his aim, 
than to disenchant mankind of the self-deceits 
by which that exaltation is usually attempted. 
The book, it is true, indicates a tone of feeling 
utterly removed from that which animates the 
gay and the busy sceues of life; but it could 
not have been written except by one accus¬ 
tomed to observe those scenes with the keen¬ 
est scrutiny, and to study the actors in them 
with the most profound discernment. To this 
commendation must be added the praise (to 
borrow terms but too familiar) of evangelical 
orthodoxy. A Protestant synod might indeed 
have extracted from the pages of Ignatius 
many propositions to anathematize; but they 
could also have drawn from them much to 
confirm the doctrines to -which their confes¬ 
sions had given such emphatic prominency. 
If he yielded to the demigods of Rome what 
we must regard as an idolatrous homage, it 
would be mere prejudice to deny that his su¬ 
preme adoration was reserved for that awful 
Being to whom alone it was due. If he as¬ 
cribed to merely ritual expiations a value of 
which we believe them to be altogether destitute, 
yet were all his mighty powers held in the 
most earnest and submissive affiance in the 
divine nature, as revealed under the veil of hu¬ 
man infirmity and of more than human suffer¬ 
ing. After the lapse of two centuries, Philip 
Doddridge, than whom no man ever breathed 
more freely on earth the atmosphere of heaven, 
produced a work of which the Spiritual Exer¬ 
cises might have afforded the model—so many 
are still the points of contact between those 
who, ranging themselves round the great ob¬ 
ject of Christianity as their common centre, 
occupy the most opposite positions in that ex¬ 
panded circle. 

From the publication of the “Spiritual Exer¬ 
cises” to the Vow of Montmartre, mne years 
elapsed. They wore away in pilgrimages, in 
feats of asceticism, in the working of miracles, 
and in escapes all but miraculous, from dan¬ 
gers which the martial spirit of the saint, no 
less than his piety, impelled him to incur. In 
the caverns of Monreza he had vowed to scale 
the heights of ‘perfection' and i: therefore be- 



IGNATIUS LOYOLA AND IIIS ASSOCIATES. 


123 


hooved him thus to climb that obstinate emi¬ 
nence, in the path already trodden by all the 
canonized and beatified heroes of the church. 
But he had also vowed to conduct his fellow- 
pilgrims from the eity of destruction to the 
land of Beulah. In prison and in shipwreck, 
fainting with hunger or wasted with disease, 
his inflexible spirit still brooded over that 
bright, though as yet shapeless vision; until at 
length it assumed a coherent form as he knelt 
on the mount of Olives, and traced the last in¬ 
delible foot-print of the ascending Redeemer 
of mankind. At that hallowed spot had ended 
the weary way of Him who had bowed the 
heavens, and came down to execute on earth 
a mission of unutterable love and matchless 
self-denial; and there was revealed to the pro¬ 
phetic gaze of the future founder of the order 
of Jesus, (no seer-like genius kindled by high 
resolves,) the long line of missionaries who, 
animated by his example, and guided by his 
instructions, should proclaim that’holy name 
from the rising to the setting sun. It was in¬ 
deed a futurity perceptible only to the tele¬ 
scopic eye of faith. At the mature age of 
thirty, possessing no language but his own, no 
science but that of the camp, and no literature 
beyond the biographies of Paladins, and of 
saints, he became the self-destined teacher of 
the future teachers of the world. Hoping 
against hope, he returned to Barcelona, and 
there, as the class-fellow of little children, com¬ 
menced the study of the first rudiments of the 
Latin tongue. 

Among the established facetix of the stage, 
are the distractions of dramatic Eloisas under 
the tutorship of their Abelards, in the attempt 
to conjugate Amo. Few play-wrights, probably, 
have been aware that the jest had its type, if 
not its origin, in the scholastic experiences of 
Ignatius Loyola. At the same critical point, 
and in the same manner, a malignant spirit ar¬ 
rested his advance in the grammar. On each 
successive inflection of the verb, corresponding 
elevations heavenwards were excited in his 
soul by the demon, who, assuming the garb of 
an angel of light, thus succeeded in disturbing 
his memory. To baffle his insidious enemy, 
the harassed scholar employed the pedagogue 
to make liberal use of that discipline of which 
who can ever forget the efficacy or the pain? The 
exorcism was complete. Amo, in all her af¬ 
fectionate moods, and changeful tenses, became 
familiar as household words. Thus Thomas 
a Kempis was made to speak intelligibly. 
Erasmus also revealed his hidden treasures of 
learning and wit, though ultimately exiled 
from the future schools of the Jesuits, for the 
same offence of having disturbed the thoughts 
of his devout reader. Energy won her accus¬ 
tomed triumphs, and, in the year 1528, he be¬ 
came a student of the Humanities, and’of what 
was then called philosophy, at the University 
of Paris. 

Of the seven decades of human life, the 
brightest and the best, in which other men 
achieve or contend for distinction, was devoted 
by Ignatius to tho* studies preparatory to his 
great undertaking. Grave professors examined 
him on their proelections, and, when these were 
over, he sought the means of subsistence by 


traversing the Netherlands and England as a 
beggar. Unheeded and despised as he sat at 
the feet of the learned, or solicited alms of the 
rich, he was still maturing in the recesses of 
his bosom designs more lofty than the highest 
to which the monarchs of the houses of Valois 
or of Tudor had ever dared to aspire. In the 
University of Paris he at length found the 
means of carrying into effect the cherished 
purposes of so many years. It was the heroic 
age of Spain, and the countrymen of Gonsalvo 
and Cortes lent a willing ear to counsels of 
daring on any field of adventure, whether se¬ 
cular or spiritual. His companions in study 
thus became his disciples in religion. Nor 
were his the common-place methods of making 
converts. To the contemplative and the timid, 
he enjoined hardy exercises of active virtue. 
To the gay and ardent, he appeared in a 
spirit still more buoyant than their own. To 
a debauchee, whom nothing else couid move, 
he presented himself neck-deep in a pool of 
frozen water, to teach the more impressively 
the duty of subduing the carnal appetites. To 
an obdurate priest, he made a general confes¬ 
sion of his own sins, with such agonies of re¬ 
morse and shame, as to break up, by force of 
sympathy, the fountains of penitence in the 
bosom of the confessor. Nay, he even engaged 
at billiards with a joyous lover of the game, 
on condition that the defeated player should 
serve his antagonist for a month; and the vic¬ 
torious saint enforced the penalty by consign¬ 
ing his adversary a month of secluded devotion. 
Others yielded at once and without a struggle 
to the united influence of his sanctity and 
genius; and it is remarkable that, from these 
more docile converts, he selected, with but two 
exceptions, the original members of his infant 
order. Having performed the initiatory rite 
of the Spiritual Exercises, they all swore on 
the consecrated host in the crypt of St. Denys, 
to accompany their spiritual father on a mis¬ 
sion to Palestine; or, if that should be imprac¬ 
ticable, to submit themselves to the vicar of 
Christ, to be disposed of as missionaries at his 
pleasu re. 

Impetuous as had been the temper of Ignatius 
in early life, he had learned to be patient of 
the slow growth of great designs. Leaving 
his disciples to complete their studies at Paris 
under the care of Peter Faber, he returned to 
Spain to recruit their number, to mature his 
alans, and, perhaps, to escape from a too 
familiar intercourse with his future subjects. 
In the winter of 1536, they commenced their 
pilgrimage to the eternal city. Xavier was 
their leader. Accomplished in all courtly ex¬ 
ercises, he prepared for his journey by binding 
tight cords round his arms and legs, in holy 
revenge for the pleasure which their graceful 
agility had once afforded him; and pursued his 
way with Spartan constancy, till the corroded 
flesh closed obstinately over the ligatures. 
Miracle, the prompt handmaid of energies like 
his, burst the bands which no surgeon could 
extricate; and her presence was attested by 
the toils which his loosened limbs immediately 
endured in the menial service of his fellow 
travellers. At Venice they rejoined their 
leader, and there employed themselves iu mi 





124 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


nistering to the patients in the hospitals. Fore¬ 
most in every act of intrepid self-mortification, 
Xavier here signalized his zeal by exploits, 
the mere recital of which would derange the 
stomachs of ordinary men. While courting 
all the physical tortures of purgatory, his soul, 
however, inhaled the anticipated raptures of 
Paradise. Twice these penances and raptures 
brought him to the gates of death; and, in his 
last extremity, he caused himself to be borne 
to places of public resort, that his ghastly as¬ 
pect might teach the awful lessons which his 
tongue was no longer able to pronounce. 

Such prodigies, whether enacted by the 
saints of Rome or by those of Benares, exhibit 
a sovereignty of the spiritual over the animal 
nature, which can hardly be contemplated with¬ 
out some feelings akin to reverence. But, on 
the whole, the hooked Faqueer spinning round 
his gibbet is the more respectable suicide of 
the two; for his homage is, at least, meet for 
the deity he worships. He whose name had 
been assumed by Ignatius and his followers, 
equally victorious over the stoical illusions 
and the lower affections of our nature, had 
been accustomed to seek repose among the 
domestic charities of life, and to accept such 
blameless solaces as life has to offer to the 
weary and the heavy-laden ; nor could services 
less in harmonjr with his serene self-reverence 
have been presented to him, than the vehement 
emotions, the squalid filth, and the lacerated 
frames of the first members of the society of 
Jesus. Loyola himself tolerated, encouraged, 
and shared these extravagances. His counte¬ 
nance was as haggard, his flagellations as 
cruel, and his couch and diet as sordid as the 
rest. They who will conquer crowns, whether 
ghostly or secular, must needs tread in slippery 
places. He saw his comrades faint and die 
with the extremity of their sufferings, and as¬ 
suming the character of an inspired prophet, 
promoted, by predicting, their recovery. One 
of the gentlest and most patient of them, 
Rodriguez, flying for relief to a solitary hermit¬ 
age, found his retreat obstructed by a man of 
terrible aspect and gigantic stature, armed 
with a naked sword and breathing menaces. 
Hosez, another of his associates, happening to 
die at the moment when Ignatius, prostrate be¬ 
fore the altar, was reciting from the Confitcor 
the words, ‘ et omnibus sanctis,’ that Countless 
host was revealed to the eye of the saint; and 
among them, resplendent in glory, appeared 
his deceased friend, to sustain and animate 
the hopes of his surviving brethren. As he 
journeyed with Laynez, he saw a still more 
awful vision. It exhibited that Being whom 
no eye hath seen, and whom no tongue may 
lightly name, and with him the eternal Son, 
bearing a heavy cross, and uttering the wel¬ 
come assurance, “I will be propitious to you 
at Rome.” 

These, however, were but the auxiliary and 
occasional arts (if so they must be termed) by 
which the sovereignty of Ignatius was esta¬ 
blished. It behooved him to acquire the unhe¬ 
sitating submission of noble minds, ignited by 
a zeal as intense and as enduring as his own; 
and it was on a far loftier basis than that of 
bodily penances or ecstatic dreams, that for 


ten successive years their initiatory discipline 
had been conducted. Wildly as their leader 
may have described his survey of the celestial 
regions, and of their triumphant inmates, he 
had anxiously weighed thg state of the world 
in which he dwelt, and the nature of his fellow 
sojourners there. He was intimately aware 
of the effects on human character of self-ac¬ 
quaintance, of action, and of suffering. He 
therefore required his disciples to scrutinize 
the recesses and the workings of their own 
hearts, till the aching sense found relief rather 
than excitement, in turning from the wonders 
and the shame within, to the mysteries and the 
glories of the world of unembodied spirits. He 
trained them to ceaseless activity, until the 
transmutation of means into ends was com¬ 
plete; and efforts, at first the most irksome, 
had become spontaneous and even grateful 
exercises. He accustomed them to every form 
of privation and voluntary pain, until fortitude, 
matured into habit, had been the source of 
enjoyments, as real as to the luxurious they 
are incomprehensible. He rendered them sto¬ 
ics, mystics, enthusiasts, and then combined 
all into an institute, than which no human 
association was ever more emphatically prac¬ 
tical, or more to the purpose and the time. 

Of all the occupations to which man can 
devote the earlier years of life, none probably 
leaves on the character an impress so deep 
and indelible as the profession of arms. In 
no other calling are the whole range of our 
sympathetic affections, whether kindly or the 
reverse, called into such habitual and active 
exercise; nor does any other stimulate the 
mere intellectual powers with a force so irre¬ 
sistible, when once they are effectually aroused 
from their accustomed torpor. Loyola was a 
soldier to the last breath he drew, a general 
whose authority none might question, a com¬ 
rade on w T hose cordiality all might rely, sus¬ 
taining all the dangers and hardships he ex¬ 
acted of his followers, and in his religious cam¬ 
paigns a strategist of consummate skill and 
most comprehensive survey. It was his maxim 
that war ought to be aggressive, and that even 
an inadequate force might be wisely weakened 
by detachments on a distant service, if the pros¬ 
pect of success was such, that the vague and 
perhaps exaggerated rumour'of it would strike 
terror into nearer foes, and animate the hopes 
of irresolute allies. To conquer Lutheranism, 
by converting to the faith of Rome the barba¬ 
rous or half-civilized nations of the earth, was, 
therefore, among the earliest of his projects; 
and his searching eye had scanned the spirits 
of his lieutenants to discover which of them 
was best adapted for enterprises so replete 
with difficulty and hazard. It was necessary 
that he should select men superior, not only to 
all the -allurements of appetite, and the com¬ 
mon infirmities of our race, but superior, also, 
to those temptations to which an inquisitive 
mind and abilities of a high order expose their 
possessor. His missionaries must be men 
prepared to do and to dare, but not much dis¬ 
posed to speculate. They % must burn with a 
zeal which no sufferings or disappointment 
could extinguish; but must not feel those im¬ 
pulses which might prompt men of large capa- 



IGNATIUS LOYOLA AND HIS ASSOCIATES. 


125 


city to convert a subordinate into an indepen¬ 
dent command. Long he weighed, and most 
sagaciously did he decide this perplexing 
choice. It fell on many who well fulfilled 
these conditions, but on none in whom all the 
requisites for such a service met so marvel¬ 
lously as on him who had borne himself so 
bravely in the chapel of St. Denys, and with 
such strange mortifications of the flesh in the 
pilgrimage to Rome. 

It was in the year 150G that Francis Xavier, 
the youngest child of a numerous family, was 
born in the castle of his ancestors in the Pyre¬ 
nees. Robust and active, of a gay humour 
and ardent spirit, the young mountaineer lis¬ 
tened with a throbbing heart to the military 
legends of his house, and to the inward voice 
which spoke of days to come, when his illus¬ 
trious lineage should derive new splendour 
from his own achievements. But the hearts 
of his parents yearned over the son of their 
old age ; and the enthusiasm which would have 
borne him to the pursuit of glory in the camp, 
was diverted by their counsels to the less ha¬ 
zardous contest for literary eminence at the 
University of Paris. From the embrace of 
Aristotle and his commentators, he would, 
however, have been prematurely withdrawn 
by the failure of his resources, (for the lords 
of Xavier were not wealthy,) if a domestic 
prophetess (his eldest sister) had not been in¬ 
spired to reveal his marvellous career and 
immortal recompense. For a child destined to 
have altars raised to his name throughout the 
Catholic church, and masses chanted in his 
honour till time should be no longer, every 
sacrifice was wisely made; and he was thus 
enabled to struggle on at the college of St. 
Barbara, till he had become qualified to earn 
his own maintenance as a public teacher of 
philosoph} r . His chair was crowded by the 
studious, and his society courted by the gay, 
the noble, and the rich. It was courted, also, 
by one who stood aloof from the thronging 
multitude ; among them, but not of them. Sor¬ 
did in dress but of lofty bearing, at once unim¬ 
passioned and intensely earnest, abstemious 
of speech, yet occasionally uttering, in deep 
and most melodious tones, words of strange 
significance, Ignatius Loyola was gradually 
working over the mind of his young compa¬ 
nion a spell which no difference of taste, of 
habits, or of age, was of power to subdue. 
Potent as it was, the charm was long resisted. 
Hilarity was the native and indispensable ele¬ 
ment of Francis Xavier, and in his grave mo¬ 
nitor he found an exhaustless topic of mirth 
and raillery. Armed with satire, which was 
not always playful, the light heart of youth 
contended, as best it might, against the solemn 
impressions which he could neither welcome 
nor avoid. Whether he partook of the frivo¬ 
lities in which he delighted, or in the disquisi¬ 
tions in which he excelled, or traced the wind¬ 
ings of the Seine through the forest which then 
lined its banks, Ignatius was still at hand to 
discuss with him the charms of society, of 
learning, or of nature; but, whatever had been 
the theme, it was still closed by the same 
awful inquiry, “What shall it profit a man if 
he gain the whole world and lose his own 


soul V* The world which Xavier had sought 
to gain, was indeed already exhibiting to him 
its accustomed treachery. It had given him 
amusement and applause; but with his self- 
government had stolen from him his pupils 
and his emoluments. Ignatius recruited both. 
He became the eulogist of the genius and the 
eloquence of his friend, and, as he presented to 
him the scholars attracted by these panegyrics, 
would repeat them in the presence of the de¬ 
lighted teacher; and then, as his kindling eye 
attested the sense of conscious and acknow¬ 
ledged merit, would check the rising exulta¬ 
tion by the ever-recurring question, “What 
shall it profit V* Improvidence squandered these 
new resources; but nothing could damp the 
zeal of Ignatius. There he was again, though 
himself the poorest of the poor, ministering to 
the wants of Xavier, from a purse filled by the 
alms he had solicited; but there again was 
also the same unvarying demand, urged in the 
same rich though solemn cadence, “ What 
shall it profit?” In the unrelaxing grasp of 
the strong man—at once forgiven and assisted, 
rebuked and beloved by his stern associate— 
Xavier gradually yielded to the fascination. 
He became, like his master, impassive, at 
least in appearance, to all sublunary pains 
and pleasures; and having performed the ini¬ 
tiatory rite of the Spiritual Exercises, excelled 
all his brethren of the society of Jesus in the 
fervour of his devotion and the austerity of his 
self-discipline. 

Whatever might have been his reward in 
another life, his name would have probably 
left no trace in the world’s records, if John III. 
of Portugal, resolving to plant the Christian 
faith on the Indian territories which had be¬ 
come subject to the dominion or influence of 
his crown, had not petitioned the pope to select 
some fit leader in this peaceful crusade. On 
the advice of Ignatius, the choice of the holy 
father fell on Francis Xavier. A happier se¬ 
lection could not have been made, nor was a 
summons to toil, to suffering, and to death, 
ever so joyously received. In the visions of 
the night he had often groaned under the in¬ 
cumbent weight of a wild Indian, of ebon hue 
and gigantic stature, seated on his shoulders; 
and he had often traversed tempestuous seas, 
enduring shipwreck and famine, persecution 
and danger, in all their most ghastly forms; 
and as each peril was encountered, his pant¬ 
ing soul had invoked, in still greater abun¬ 
dance, the means of making such glorious sacri¬ 
fices for the conversion of mankind. When 
the clearer sense and the approaching accom¬ 
plishment of these dark intimations were dis¬ 
closed to him, passionate sobs attested the 
rapture which his tongue could not speak. 
Light of heart, and joyful in discourse, he con¬ 
ducted his fellow-pilgrims from Rome to Lis¬ 
bon, across the Pyrenees. As he descended 
their southern slopes, there rose to his sight 
the towers where he had enjoyed the sports of 
childhood, and woven the day-dreams of youth ; 
where still lived the mother, who for eighteen 
years had daily watched and blessed him, and 
the saintly sister whose inspired voice had 
foretold his high vocation. It was all too high 
for the momentary intrusion of the holiest of 
. l2 




126 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


merely human feelings. He was on his way 
with tidings of mercy to a fallen Avorld, and he 
had not one hour to waste, nor one parting 
tear to bestow on those whom he best loved 
and most revered, and whom, in this life, he 
could never hope to meet again. 

We are not left to conjecture in what light 
his conduct was regarded. “I care little, most 
illustrious doctor, for the judgment of men and 
least of all for their judgment who decide be¬ 
fore they hear and before they understand,” 
was his half-sportive, half-indignant answer to 
the remonstrances of a grave and well bene- 
ficed kinsman, (a shrewd, thriving, hospitable, 
much-respected man, no unlikely candidate 
for the mitre, and a candidate too, in his own 
drowsy way, for amaranthine crowns and ce¬ 
lestial blessedness,) who very plausibly be¬ 
lieved his nephew mad. Mad or sober, he was 
at least impelled by a force, at the first shock 
of which the united common Sense and re¬ 
spectability of mankind must needs fall to 
pieces—the force of will concentrated on one 
great end, and elevated above the misty regions 
of doubt, into that unclouded atmosphere where, 
attended by her handmaids, hope and courage, 
joy and fortitude, faith converts the future into 
the present, and casts the brightest hues over 
objects the most repulsive to human sense, and 
the most fainful to our feeble nature. 

As the vessel in which Xavier embarked 
for India fell down the Tagus and shook out 
her reefs to the wind, many an eye was dimmed 
with unwonted tears; for she bore a regiment 
of a thousand men to re-enforce the garrison 
of Goa; nor could the bravest of that gallant 
host gaze on the receding land without fore¬ 
boding that he might never see again those 
dark chestnut forests and rich orange groves, 
with the peaceful convents and the long-loved 
homes reposing in their bosom. The counte¬ 
nance of Xavier alone beamed with delight. 
He knew that he should never tread his native 
mountains more; but he w T as not an exile. He 
was to depend for food and raiment on the 
bounty of his fellow-passengers; but no thought 
lor the morrow troubled him. He was going 
t > convert nations, of which he knew neither 
the language nor even the names; but he felt 
no misgivings. Worn by incessant sea-sick¬ 
ness, with the refuse food of the lowest seamen 
for his diet, and the cordage of the ship for his 
couch, he rendered to the diseased services too 
revolting to be described; and lived among the 
dying and the profligate the unwearied minis¬ 
ter of consolation and of peace. In the midst 
of that floating throng, he knew how to create 
for himself a sacred solitude, and how to mix 
in all their pursuits in the free spirit of a man 
of the world, a gentleman, and a scholar. With 
the viceroy and his officers he talked, as pleased 
them best, of war or trade, of politics or navi¬ 
gation ; and to restrain the common soldiers 
from gambling, would invent for their amuse¬ 
ment less dangerous pastimes, or even hold 
the stakes for which they played, that by his 
presence and his gay discourse he might at 
least check the excesses which he could not 
prevent. 

Five weary months (weary to all but him) 
brought the ship to Mozambique, where an en¬ 


demic fever threatened a premature grave to 
the apostle of the Indies. Cut his was not a 
spirit to be quenched or allayed by the fiercest 
paroxysms of disease. At each remission of 
his malady, he crawled to the beds of his fel¬ 
low-sufferers to soothe their terrors or assuage 
their pains. To the eye of any casual observer 
the most wretched of mankind, in the esteem 
of his companions the happiest and the most 
holy, he reached Goa just thirteen months after 
his departure from Lisbon. 

At Goa, Xavier was shocked, and had fear 
been an element in his nature, would have 
been dismayed, by the almost universal depra¬ 
vity of the inhabitants. It exhibited itself in 
those offensive forms which characterize the 
crimes of civilized men when settled among a 
feebler race, and released from even the con¬ 
ventional decencies of civilization. Swinging 
in his hand a large bell, he traversed the streets 
of the city, and implored the astonished crowd 
to send their children to him, to be instructed 
in the religion which they still at least pro¬ 
fessed. Though he had never been addressed 
by the soul-stirring name of father, he knew 
tliat in the hardest and the most dissolute heart 
which had once felt the parental instinct, there 
is one chord which can never be wholly out 
of tune. A crowd of little ones were quickly 
placed under his charge. He lived among 
them as the most laborious of teachers, and 
the gentlest and the gayest of friends ; and then 
returned them to their homes, that by their 
! more hallowed example they might there im¬ 
part, with all the unconscious eloquence of 
filial love, the lessons of wisdom and of piety 
they had been taught. No cry of human misery 
reached him in vain. He became an inmate 
of the hospitals, selecting that of the leprous 
as the object of his peculiar care. Even in the 
haunts of debauchery, and at the tables of the 
profligate, he was to be seen an honoured and 
a-welcome guest; delighting that most unmeet 
audience with the vivacity of his discourse, 

, and sparing neither pungent jests to render 
vice ridiculous, nor sportive flatteries to allure 
the fallen back to the still distasteful paths of 
soberness and virtue. Strong in purity of pur¬ 
pose, and stronger still in one sacred remem¬ 
brance, he was content to be called the friend 
of publicans and sinners. He had in truth 
long since deserted the standard of prudence, 
the offspring of forethought, for the banners of 
wisdom, the child of love, and followed them 
through perils not to be hazarded under any 
less triumphant leader. 

Rugged were the ways along which he was 
thus conducted. In those times, as in our own, 
there was on the Malabar coast a pearl fishery, 

; and then, as now, the pearl-divers formed a 
separate and degraded caste. It was not till 
after a residence of twelve months at Goa, that 
Xavier heard of these people. He heard that 
they were ignorant and miserable, and he in¬ 
quired no farther. On that burning shore his 
bell once more rang out an invitation of mercy, 
and again were gathered around him troops of 
inquisitive and docile children. For fifteen 
months he lived among these abject fishermen, 
his only food their rice and water, reposing in 
their huts, and allowing himself but three 







IGNATIUS LOYOLA AND HIS ASSOCIATES. 


127 


hours’ sleep in the .four-and-twenty. He be¬ 
came at once their physician, the arbiter in 
their disputes, and their advocate for the re¬ 
mission of their annual tribute with the govern¬ 
ment of Goa. The bishop of that city had 
assisted him with two interpreters; but his im¬ 
passioned spirit struggled, and not in vain, for 
some more direct intercourse with the objects 
ot his care. Committing to memory.transla¬ 
tions, at the time unintelligible to himself, of 
the creeds and other symbols of his faith, he 
recited them with tones and gestures, which 
spoke at once to the senses and to the hearts 
of his disciples. All obstacles yielded to his 
restless zeal. lie soon learned to converse, to 
preach, and to write in their language. Many 
an humble cottage was surmounted by a cru¬ 
cifix, the mark of its consecration ; and many 
a rude countenance reflected the sorrows and 
the hopes which they had been taught to 
associate with that sacred emblem. “I have 
nothing to add,” (the quotation is from one 
oi the letters which at this time he wrote 
to Loyola,) “but that they who came forth to 
labour for the salvation of idolaters, receive 
from on high such consolations, that if there 
be on earth such a thing as happiness, it is 
theirs.” 

If there be such a thing, it is but as the 
checkered sunshine of a vernal day. A hostile 
inroad from Madura overwhelmed the poor 
fishermen who had learned to call Xavier their 
father, threw down their simple chapels, and 
drove them for refuge to the barren rocks and 
sand-banks which line the western shores of 
the strait of Manar. But their father was at 
hand to share their affliction, to procure for 
them from the viceroy at Goa relief and food, 
and to direct their confidence to a still more 
powerful Father, whose presence and goodness 
they might adore even amidst the wreck of all 
their earthly treasures. 

It was a lesson not unmeet for those on 
whom such treasures had been bestowed in 
the most ample abundance; and Xavier ad¬ 
vanced to Travancore, to teach it there to the 
Rajah and his courtiers. No facts resting on 
remote human testimony can be more exempt 
from doubt than the general outline of the tale 
which follows. A solitary, poor, and unpro¬ 
tected stranger, he burst through the barriers 
which separate men of different tongues and 
races; and with an ease little less than mirac¬ 
ulous, established for himself the means of in¬ 
terchanging thoughts with the people of the 
east. They may have ill-gathered his mean¬ 
ing, but by some mysterious force of sympathy 
they soon caught his ardour. Idol temples 
fell by the hands of their former worshippers. 
Christian churches rose at his bidding; and 
the kingdom of Travancore was agitated with 
new ideas and unwonted controversies. The 
Brahmins argued—as the church by law es¬ 
tablished has not seldom argued—with fire and 
sword, and the interdict of earth and water to 
the enemies of their repose. A foreign in¬ 
vader threw a still heavier sword into the 
trembling scales. From the southward ap¬ 
peared on the borders of Travancore the same 
force which had swept away the poor fisher¬ 
men of Malabar. Some embers of Spanish 


chivalry still glowed in the bosom of Xavier 
He flew to the scene of the approaching com 
bat, and there, placing himself in the van of 
the protecting army, poured forth a passionate 
prayer to the Lord of Hosts, raised on high 
his crucifix, and with kindling eyes, and far 
resounding voice, delivered 'the" behests of 
Heaven to the impious invaders. So runs the 
tale, and ends (it is almost superfluous to add) 
in the rout of the astounded foe. It is a matter 
of less animated, and perhaps of more authen¬ 
tic history, that for his services in this war 
Xavier was rewarded by the unbounded grati¬ 
tude of the rajah, was honoured with the title 
of his great father, and rescued from all farther 
Brahminical persecution. 

Power and courtly influence form an intoxi- * 
eating draught even when raised to the lips of 
an ascetic and a saint. Holy as he was, the 
great father of the rajah of Travancore seems 
not entirely to have escaped this feverish thirst. 
Don Alphonso de Souza, a weak though ami¬ 
able man, was at that time the viceroy of 
Portuguese India, and Xavier (such was now 
his authority) despatched a messenger to Lisbon 
to demand, rather than to advise his recall. 
Within the limits of his high profession, (and 
what subject is wholly foreign to it?) the am¬ 
bassador of the King of Kings may owe re¬ 
spect, but hardly deference, to any mere earthly 
monarch. So argued Francis, so judged King 
John, and so fell Alphonso de Souza, as many 
a greater statesman has fallen, and may yet 
fall, under the weight of sacerdotal displeasure. 
This weakness, however, was not his only re¬ 
corded fault. Towards the northern extremity 
of Ceylon lies the island of Manar, a depen¬ 
dency, in Xavier’s day, of the adjacent king¬ 
dom of Jaffna, where then reigned a sort of 
oriental Philip II. The islanders had become 
converts to the Christian faith, and expiated 
their apostasy by their lives. Six hundred 
men, women, and children, fell in one royal 
massacre; and the tragedy was closed by the 
murder of the eldest son of the king of Jaffna, 
by his father’s orders. Deposition in case of 
misgovernment, and the transfer to the depos¬ 
ing power of the dominions of the offender, 
was no invention of Hastings, or of Clive. It 
is one of the most ancient constitutional max¬ 
ims of the European dynasties in India. It 
may even boast the venerable suffrage of St. 
Francis Xavier. At his instance, De Souza 
equipped an armament to hurl the guilty ruler 
of Jaffna from his throne, and to subjugate his 
territories to the most faithful king. In the in¬ 
vading fleet the indignant saint led the way, 
with promises of triumphs, both temporal and 
eternal. But the expedition failed. Coward¬ 
ice or treachery defeated the design. De Souza 
paid the usual penalties of ill success. Xavier 
sailed away to discover other fields of spiritual 
warfare. 

On the Coromandel coast, near the city of 
Meliapor, might be seen in those times the 
oratory and the tomb of St. Thomas, the first 
teacher of Christianity in India. It was in a 
cool and sequestered grotto that the apostle 
had been wont to pray; and there yet appeared 
on the living rock, in bold reliefj the cross at 
which he knelt, with a crystal fountain of 





1*28 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


medicinal waters gushing from the base of it. 
On the neighbouring height, a church with a 
marble altar, stained, after the lapse of fifteen 
centuries, with the blood of the martyr, ascer¬ 
tained the sacred spot at which his bones had 
been committed to the dust. To this venerable 
shrine Xavier retired, to learn the will of Hea¬ 
ven concerning him. If we may believe the 
oath of one of his fellow-pilgrims, he main¬ 
tained, on this occasion, for seven successive 
days an unbroken fast and silence—no unfit 
preparation for his approaching conflicts. 
Even around the tomb of the apostle malig¬ 
nant demons prowl by night; and, though 
strong in the guidance of the Virgin, Xavier 
not only found himself in their obscene grasp, 
but received from them blows, such as no 
weapons in human hands could have inflicted, 
and which had nearly brought to a close his 
labours and his life. Baffled by a superior 
power, the fiends opposed a still more subtle 
hindrance to his designs against their king¬ 
dom. In the garb, and in the outward sem¬ 
blance of a band of choristers, they disturbed 
his devotions by such soul-subduing strains, 
that the very harmonies of heaven might seem" 
to have been awakened to divert the Christian 
warrior from his heavenward path. All in 
vain their fury and their guile. He found the 
direction he implored, and the first bark which 
sailed from the Coromandel shore to the city 
of Malacca, bore the obedient missionary to 
that great emporium of eastern commerce. 

Thirty years before the arrival of Xavier, Ma¬ 
lacca had been conquered by Alphonso Albu¬ 
querque. It was a place abandoned to every form 
of sensual and enervating indulgence. Through 
her crowded streets a strange and solemn vi¬ 
siter passed along, pealing his faithful bell, and 
earnestly imploring the prayers of the faithful 
for that guilty people. Curiosity and alarm 
soon gave way to ridicule; but Xavier’s pano¬ 
ply was complete. The messenger of divine 
wrath judged this an unfit occasion for court¬ 
ing aversion or contempt. He became the 
gayest of the gay, and, in address at least, the 
very model of an accomplished cavalier. 
Foiled at their own weapons, his dissolute 
countrymen acknowledged the irresistible 
authority of a self-devotion so awful, relieved 
and embellished as it was by every social 
grace. Thus the work of reformation pros¬ 
pered, or seemed to prosper. Altars rose in 
the open streets, the confessional was thronged 
by penitents, translations of devout books were 
multiplied; and the saint, foremost in every 
toil, applied himself with all the activity of his 
spirit to study the structure and the graceful 
pronunciation of the Malayar tongue. But the 
plague was not thus to be stayed. A relapse 
into all their former habits filled up the 
measure of their crimes. With prophetic 
voice Xavier announced the impending chas¬ 
tisements of Heaven; and, shaking off from his 
feet the.dust of the obdurate city, pursued his 
indefatigable way to Amboyna. 

That island, then a part of the vast domi¬ 
nions of Portugal in the east, had scarcely 
witnessed the commencement of Xavier’s ex¬ 
ertions, when a fleet of Spanish vessels ap¬ 
peared in hostile array on the shores. They 


were invaders,and even corsairs; for their ex 
pedition had been disavowed by Charles V 
Pestilence, however, was raging among them ; 
and Xavier was equally ready to hazard his 
life in the cause of Portugal, or in the service 
of her afflicted enemies. Day and night he 
lived in the infected ships, soothing every 
spiritual distress, and exerting all the magical 
influence of his name to procure for the sick 
whatever might contribute to their recovery 
or soothe their pains. The coals of fire, thus 
heaped on the heads of the pirates, melted 
hearts otherwise steeled to pity; and to Xavier 
belonged the rare, and perhaps the unrivalled, 
glory of repelling an invasion by no weapons 
but those of self-denial and love. 

But glory, the praise of men or their grati¬ 
tude, what were these to him I As the Spa¬ 
niards retired peacefully from Amboyna, he, too, 
quitted the half-adoring multitude,' whom he 
had rescued from the horrors of a pirates’ war, 
and, spurning all the timid counsel which 
would have stayed his course, proceeded, as 
the herald of good tidings, to the half barbarous 
islands of the neighbouring archipelago. “ If 
those lands,” such was his indignant exclama¬ 
tion, “had scented woods and mines of gold, 
Christians would find courage to go there ; nor 
would all the perils of the world prevent them. 
They are dastardly and alarmed, because there 
is nothing to be gained there but the souls of 
men, and shall love be less hardy and less 
generous than avarice I They will destroy 
me, you say, by poison. It is an honour to 
which such a sinner as I dm may not aspire ; 
but this I dare to say, that whatever form of 
torture or of death awaits me, I am ready to 
suffer it ten thousand times for the salvation 
of a single soul.” Nor was this the language 
of a man insensible to the sorrows of life, or 
really unaffected by the dangers he had to in¬ 
cur. “Believe me, my beloved brethren,” 
(we quote from a letter written by him at this 
time to the society at Rome.) “ it is in general 
easy to understand the evangelical maxim, that 
he who will lose his life shall find it. But 
when the moment of action has come, and 
when the sacrifice of life for God is to be really 
made, oh then, clear as at other times the 
meaning is, it becomes deeply obscure ! so dark, 
indeed, that he alone can comprehend it, to 
■whom, in his mercy, God himself interprets 
it. Then it is we know how weak and frail 
we are.” 

Weak and frail he may have been ; but from 
the days of Paul of Tarsus to our own, the 
annals of mankind exhibit no other example 
of a soul borne onward so triumphantly through 
distress and danger, in all their most appalin^ 
aspects. He battled with hunger, and thirst, 
and nakedness, and assassination, and pursued 
his mission of love, with even increasing ar¬ 
dour, amidst the wildest war of the contending 
elements. At the island of Moro (one of the 
group of the Moluccas) he took his stand at 
the foot of a volcano; and as the pillar of fire 
threw up its wreaths to heaven, and the earth 
tottered beneath him, and the firmament was 
rent by falling rocks and peals of unintermit¬ 
ting thunder, he pointed to the fierce lightnings, 
and the river of molten lava, and called on the 




IGNATIUS LOYOLA AND HIS ASSOCIATES. 


agitated crowd which clung to him for safety, 
to repent, and to obey the truth; but he also 
taught them that the sounds which racked 
their ears were the groans of the infernal 
world, and ihe sights which blasted their eyes, 
an outbreak from the atmosphere of the place 
of torment. Repairing for the celebration of 
mass to some edifice which he had consecrated 
for the purpose, an earthquake shook the 
building to its base. The terrified worshippers 
fled; but Xavier, standing in meek composure 
before the rocking altar, deliberately completed 
that mysterious sacrifice, with a faith at least 
in this instance enviable,in the real presence; 
rejoicing, as he states in his description of the 
scene, to perceive that the demons of the island 
thus attested their flight before the archangel’s 
sword, from the place where they had so long 
exercised their foul dominion'. There is no 
schoolboy of our days who could not teach 
much, unsuspected by Francis Xavier, of the 
laws which govern the material and the spirit¬ 
ual worlds; nor have w r e many doctors who 
know as much as he did of the nature of Him 
by whom the worlds of matter and of spirit 
were created; for he studied in the school of 
protracted martyrdom and active philanthropy, 
where are divulged secrets unknown and un¬ 
imagined by the wisest and the most learned 
of ordinary men. Imparting every where such 
knowledge as he possessed, he ranged over no 
small part of the Indian archipelago, and at 
length retraced his steps to Malacca, if even 
yet his exhortations and his prayers might avert 
her threatened doom. 

It appeared to be drawing nigh. Alaradin, 
a Mohamcdan chief of Sumatra, had laid siege 
to the place at the head of a powerful fleet and 
army. Ill-provided for defence by land, the 
Portuguese garrison was still more unprepared 
for a naval resistance. Seven shattered barks, 
unfit for service, formed their whole maritime 
strength. Universal alarm overspread the 
city, and the governor himself at once partook 
and heightened the general panic. Already, 
thoughts of capitulation had become familiar 
to the beseiged, and European chivalry had 
bowed in abject silence to the insulting taunts 
and haughty menaces of the Moslem. At this 
moment, in his slight and weather-beaten pin¬ 
nace, the messenger of peace on earth effected 
an entrance into the beleaguered harbour. But 
he came with a loud and indignant summons 
to the war; for Xavier was still a Spanish 
cavalier, and he “ thought it foul scorn” that 
gentlemen, subjects of the most faithful king, 
should thus be bearded by barbaric enemies, 
and the worshippers of Christ defied by the 
disciples of the Arabian imposter. He as¬ 
sumed the direction of the defence. By his ad¬ 
vice the seven dismantled ships were promptly 
equipped for sea. He assigned to each a com¬ 
mander; and having animated the crews with 
promises of both temporal and eternal triumphs, 
despatched them to meet and conquer the hos¬ 
tile "fleet. As they sailed from the harbour the 
admiral’s vessel ran aground and instantly be¬ 
came a wreck. Returning hope and exultation 
as promptly gave way to terror; and Xavier, 
the idol of the preceding hour, was now the 
object of popular fury. He alone retained his 


serenity. He upbraided the cowardice of the 
governor, revived the spirits of the troops, and 
encouraged the multitude with prophecies of 
success. Again the flotilla sailed, and a sud¬ 
den tempest drove it to sea. Day after day 
passed without intelligence of its safety; once 
more the hearts of the besieged failed them. 
Rumours of defeat-were rife; the Mohamedans 
had effected a landing within six leagues of the 
city, and Xavier’s name was repeated from 
mouth to mouth with cries of vengeance. He 
knelt before the altar, the menacing people 
scarcely restrained by the sanctity of the place 
from immolating him there as a victim to his 
own disastrous counsels. On a sudden his 
bosom was seen to heave as with some deep 
emotion; he raised aloft his crucifix, and with 
a glowing eye, and in tones like one possessed, 
breathed a short yet passionate prayer for vic¬ 
tory. A solemn pause ensued; the dullest eye 
could see that within that now fainting, pallid, 
agitated .frame, some power more than human 
was in communion with the weak spirit of 
man. What might be the ineffable sense thus 
conveyed from mind to mind, without the aid 
of symbols or of words ! One half hour of deep 
and agonizing silence held the awe-stricken 
assembly in breathless expectation — when, 
bounding on his feet, his countenance radiant 
with joy, and his voice clear and ringing as 
with the swelling notes of the trumpet, he ex¬ 
claimed, “ Christ has conquered for us ! At 
this very moment his soldiers are charging 
our defeated enemies; they have made a great 
slaughter—we have lost, only four of our de¬ 
fenders. On Friday next the intelligence will 
be here, and we shall then see our fleet again.” 
The catastrophe of such a tale need not to be 
told. Malacca followed her deliverer, and the 
troops of the victorious squadron, in solemn 
procession to the church, where, amidst the 
roar of cannon, the pealing of anthems, and 
hymns of adoring gratitude, his inward sense 
heard and reverenced that inarticulate voice 
which still reminded him, that for him the hour 
of repose and triumph might never come, till 
he should reach that state where sin would no 
longer demand his rebuke, nor grief his sym¬ 
pathy. He turned from the half-idolatrous 
shouts of an admiring people, and retraced his 
toilsome way to the shores of Coromandel. 

He returned to Goa a poor and solitary, but 
no longer an obscure man. From the Indus 
to the Yellow Sea, had gone forth a vague and 
marvellous rumour of him. The tale bore that 
a stranger had appeared in the semblance of a 
wayworn, abject beggar, who, by some magic 
influence, and for some inscrutable ends, had 
bowed the nations to his despotic will, while 
spurning the wealth, the pleasures, and the 
homage which they offered to their conqueror. 
Many were the wonders which travellers had 
to tell of his progress, and without number the 
ingenious theories afloat for the solution of 
them. He possessed the gift or ubiquity, could 
at the same moment speak in twenty different 
tongues, on as many dissimilar subjects, was 
impassive to heat, cold, hunger, and fatigue, 
held hourly intercourse with invisible beings, 
the guides or ministers of his designs, raised 
the dead to life, and could float, when it so 





130 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


pleased him, across the boiling ocean on the 
wings of the typhoon. Among the listeners to 
these prodigies had been Auger, a native and 
inhabitant of Japan. His conscience was bur¬ 
dened with the memory of great crimes, and 
he had sought relief in vain from many an ex¬ 
piatory rite, and from the tumults of dissipation. 
In search of the peace he could not find at 
home, he sailed to Malacca, there to consult 
with the mysterious person of whose avatar 
he had heard. But Xavier was absent, and 
the victim of remorse was retracing his melan¬ 
choly voyage to Japan, when a friendly tem¬ 
pest arrested his retreat, and once more brought 
him to Malacca. He was attended by two ser¬ 
vants, and with them, by Xavier’s directions, 
proceeded to Goa. In these three Japanese, 
his prophetic eye had at once seen the future 
instruments of the conversion of their native 
land; and to that end he instructed them to 
enter on a systematic course of training in a 
college, which he had established for such 
purposes, at the seat of Portuguese empire in 
the east. At that place Xavier, ere long, re¬ 
joined his converts. Such had been their pro¬ 
ficiency, that soon after his arrival they were 
admitted not only into the church by baptism, 
but into the society of Jesus, by the perform¬ 
ance of the spiritual exercises. 

The history of Xavier now reaches a not 
unwelcome pause. He pined for solitude and 
silence. He had been too long in constant 
intercourse with man, and found that, however 
high and holy may be the ends for which social 
life is cultivated, the habit, if unbroken, will 
impair that inward sense through which alone 
the soul can gather any true intimations of her 
nature and her destiny. He retired to com¬ 
mune with himself in a seclusion where the 
works of God alone were to be seen, and where 
no voices could be heard but those which, in 
each varying cadence, raise an unconscious 
anthem of praise and adoration to their Crea¬ 
tor. There for awhile reposing from labours 
such as few or any other of the sons of men 
have undergone, he consumed days and weeks 
in meditating prospects beyond the reach of 
any vision unenlarged by the habitual exer¬ 
cise of beneficence and piety. There, too, it 
may be, (for man must still be human,) he 
surrendered himself to dreams as baseless, and 
to ecstasies as devoid of any real meaning, as 
those which haunt the cell of the maniac. 
Peace be to the hallucinations, if such they 
were, by which the giant refreshed his slum- 
Dering powers, and from which he roused 
himself to a conflict never again to be remit¬ 
ted till his frame, yielding to the ceaseless 
pressure, should sink into a premature but 
hallowed grave. 

Scarcely four years had elapsed from the 
lirst discovery of Japan by the Portuguese, 
when Xavier, attended by Auger and his two 
servants, sailed from Goa to convert the island¬ 
ers to the Christian faith. Much good advice 
had been, as usual, wasted on him by his 
friends. To Loyola alone he confided the se¬ 
cret of his confidence. “ I cannot express to 
you” (such are his words) “ the joy with which 
I undertake this long voyage; for it is full of 
extreme perils, and we consider a fleet sailing 


to Japan as eminently prosperous in which 
one ship out of four is saved. Though the 
risk far exceeds any which T have hitherto 
encountered, I shall not decline it; for our 
Lord has imparted to me an interior revela¬ 
tion of the rich harvest which will one day be 
gathered from the cross when once planted 
there.” Whatever may be the thought of these 
voices from within, it is at least clear, that no¬ 
thing magnanimous or sublime has ever yet 
proceeded from those who have listened only 
to the voices from without. But, as if resolved 
to show that a man may at once act on mo¬ 
tives incomprehensible to his fellow mortals, 
and possess the deepest insight into the motives 
by which they are habitually governed, Xavier 
left behind him a code of instructions for his 
brother missionaries, illuminated in almost 
every page by that profound sagacity which 
results from the union of extensive knowledge 
with acute observation, mellowed by the intui¬ 
tive wisdom of a compassionate and lowly 
heart. The science of self-conquest, with a 
view to conquer the stubborn will of others, 
the act of winning admission for painful truth, 
and the duties of fidelity and reverence in the 
attempt to heal the diseases of the human spi¬ 
rit, were never taught by uninspired man with 
an eloquence more gentle, or an authority 
more impressive. A long voyage, pursued 
through every disaster which the malevolence 
of man and demons could oppose to his pro¬ 
gress, (for he was constrained to sail in a pi¬ 
ratical ship, with idols on her deck and whirl¬ 
winds in her path,) brought him, in the year 
1549, to Japan, there to practise his own les¬ 
sons, and to give a new example of heroic 
perseverance. 

His arrival had been preceded by what he 
regarded as fortunate auguries. Certain Por¬ 
tuguese merchants, who had been allowed 
to reside at the principal seaport, inhabited 
there a house haunted by spectres. Their 
presence was usually announced by the din 
of discordant and agonizing dreams ; but when 
revealed to the eye, presented forms resembling 
those which may be seen in pictures of the 
infernal state. Now the merchants, secular 
men though they were, had exorcised these 
fiends by carrying the cross in solemn proces¬ 
sion through the house; and anxious curiosity 
pervaded the city for some explanation of the 
virtue of this new and potent charm. There 
were also legends current through the country 
which might be turned to good account. Xaca, 
the son of Amida, the Virgo Deipara of Japan, 
had passed a life of extreme austerity to expi¬ 
ate the sins of men, and had inculcated a doc¬ 
trine in which even Christians must recognise 
a large admixture of sacred truth. Temples 
in honour of the mother and child overspread 
the land, and suicidal sacrifices were daily 
offered in them. The father of lies had farther 
propped up his kingdom in Japan by a pro¬ 
fane parody on the institutions of the Catholic 
church. Under the name of the Saco, there 
reigned in sacerdotal supremacy a counterpart 
of the holy father in Rome, who consecrated 
the fundi or bishops of this Japanese hierarchy, 
and regulated at his infallible will whatever 
related to the rites and ceremonies of public 




131 


IGNATIUS LOYOLA AND HIS ASSOCIATES. 


worship. Subordinate to the fundi were the 
bonzes or priests in holy orders, who, to com¬ 
plete the resemblance, taught, and at least pro¬ 
fessed to practise, an ascetic discipline. But 
here the similitude ceases; for, adds the chro¬ 
nicle, they were great knaves and sad hypo¬ 
crites. 

With these foundations on which to build, 
the ideas which Xavier had to indroduce into 
the Japanese mind, might not very widely jar 
with those by which they were preoccupied. 
Auger, now called Paul of the holy faith, was 
despatched to his former friend and sovereign, 
with a picture of the Virgin and the infant 
Jesus, and the monarch and his courtiers ad¬ 
mired, kissed, and worshipped the sacred sym¬ 
bols. Xavier himself (to use his own words) 
stood by, a mere mute statue; but there was 
Promethean fire within, and the marble soon 
found a voice. Of all his philological mira¬ 
cles, this was the most stupendous. He w r ho, 
in the decline of life, bethinks him of all that 
he once endured to unlock the sense of JSschy- 
lus, and is conscious how stammering has 
been the speech with which, in later days, he 
has been wont to mutilate the tongues of Pas¬ 
cal and of Tasso, may think it a fable that in a 
few brief weeks Xavier could converse and 
teach intelligibly in the involved and ever- 
shifting dialects of Japan. Perhaps, had the 
skeptic ever studied to converse with living 
men under the impulse of some passion which 
had absorbed every faculty of his soul, he 
might relax his incredulity; but, whatever be 
the solution, the fact is attested on evidence 
which it would be folly to discredit—that with¬ 
in a very short time Xavier began to open to 
the Japanese, in their own language and to 
their perfect understanding, the commission 
with which he was charged. Such, indeed, 
was his facility of speech, that he challenged 
the bonzes to controversies on all the myste¬ 
rious points of their and his conflicting creeds. 
The arbiters of the dispute listened as men are 
apt to listen to the war of words, and many a 
long-tailed Japanese head was shaken, as if in 
the hope that the jumbling thoughts within 
would find their level by the oft-repeated oscil¬ 
lation. It became necessary to resort to other 
means of winning their assent; and in exploits 
of asceticism, Xavier had nothing to fear from 
the rivalry of bonzes, of fundi, or of the great 
Saco himself. Cangoxima acknowledged, as 
most other luxurious cities would perhaps ac¬ 
knowledge, that he who had such a mastery 
of his own appetites and passions, must be 
animated by some power wholly exempt from 
that debasing influence. To fortify this salu¬ 
tary though very sound conclusion, Xavier 
betook himself, (if we may believe his histo¬ 
rian,) to the working of miracles. He com¬ 
pelled the fish to fill the nets of the fishermen, 
and to frequent the bay of Cangoxima, though 
previously indisposed to do so. He cured the 
leprous, and he raised the dead. Two bonzes 
became the first, and indeed the only fruits of 
his labours. The hearts of their brethren 
grew harder as the light of truth glowed with 
increasing but ineffectual brightness around 
him. The king also withdrew his favour, and 
Xavier, with two companions, carried the re¬ 


jected messages of mercy to the neighbouring 
states of the Japanese empire. 

Carrying on his back his only viaticum, the 
vessels requisite for performing the sacrifice 
of the mass, he advanced to Firando, at once 
the seaport and the capital of the kingdom of 
that name. Some Portuguese ships, riding at 
anchor there, announced his arrival in all the 
forms of nautical triumph—flags of every hue 
floating from the masts, seamen clustering on 
the yards, cannon roaring from beneath, and 
trumpets braying from above. Firando was 
agitated with debate and wonder; all asked, 
but none could afford, an explanation of the 
homage rendered by the wealthy traders to the 
meanest of their countrymen. It was given by 
the humble pilgrim himself, surrounded in the 
royal presence by all the pomp which the Eu¬ 
ropeans could display in his honour. Great 
was the effect of these auxiliaries to the work 
of an evangelist; and the modern, like the an¬ 
cient apostle, ready to become all things to all 
men, would no longer decline the abasement 
of assuming for a moment the world’s gran¬ 
deur, when he found that such puerile acts 
might allure the children of the world to listen 
to the voice of wisdom. At Meaco, then the 
seat of empire in Japan, the discovery might 
be reduced to practice with still more import¬ 
ant success, and thitherwards his steps were 
promptly directed. 

Unfamiliar to the ears of us barbarians of 
the North-Western Ocean are the very names 
of the seats of Japanese civilization through 
which his journey lay. At Amanguchi, the 
capital of Nagoto, he found the hearts of men 
hardened by sensuality, and his exhortations 
to repentance were repaid by showers of stones 
and insults. “A pleasant sort of bonze, indeed, 
who would allow us but one God and one 
woman !” was the summary remark with which 
the luxurious Amanguchians disposed of the 
teacher and his doctrine. They drove him 
forth half naked, with no provision but a bag 
of parched rice, and accompanied only by 
three of his converts, prepared to share his 
danger and his reproach. 

It was in the depth of winter, dense forests, 
steep mountains, half-frozen streams, and 
wastes of untrodden snow, lay in his path to 
Meaco. An entire month was consumed in 
traversing the wilderness, and the cruelty and 
scorn of man not seldom adding bitterness to 
the rigours of nature. On one occasion the 
wanderers were overtaken in a thick jungle 
by a horseman bearing a heavy package. 
Xavier offered to carry the load, if the rider 
would requite the service by pointing out his 
way. The offer was accepted, but hour after 
hour the horse was urged on at such a pace, 
and so rapidly sped the panting missionary 
after him, that his tortured feet and excoriated 
body sank in seeming death under the pro¬ 
tracted effort. In the extremity of his distress 
no repining word was ever heard to fall from 
him. He perforated this dreadful pilgrimage 
in silent communion with Him for whom he 
rejoiced to suffer the loss of all things; or 
spoke only to sustain the hope and courage 
of his associates. At length the walls of Meaco 
were seen, promising a repose not ungrateful 








132 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


even to his adamantine frame and fiery spirit. 
But repose was no more to visit him. He found 
the city in all the tumult and horrors of a siege. 
It was impossible to gain attention to his doc¬ 
trines amidst the din of arms; for even the Saco 
or pope of Japan could give heed to none but 
military topics. Chanting from the Psalmist— 
When Israel went out of Egypt and the house 
of Jacob from a strange people, the saint again 
plunged into sthe desert, and retraced his steps 
to Amanguchi. 

Xavier describes the Japanese very much 
as a Roman might have depicted the Greeks 
in the age of Augustus, as at once intellectual 
and sensual voluptuaries; on the best possible 
terms with themselves, a good-humoured but 
faithless race, equally acute and frivolous, 
talkative and disputatious—“ Their inquisi¬ 
tiveness,” he says, “is incredible, especially 
in their intercourse with strangers, for whom 
they have not the slightest respect, but make 
incessant sport of them.” Surrounded at Aman¬ 
guchi, by a crowd of these babblers, he was 
plied with innumerable questions about the 
immortality of the soul, the movements of the 
planets, eclipses, the rainbow—sin, grace, pa¬ 
radise, and hell. He heard and answered. A 
single response solved all these problems. 
Astronomers, meteorologists, metaphysicians, 
and divines, all heard the same sound; but to 
each it came with a different and an appro¬ 
priate meaning. So wrote from the very spot 
Father Anthony Quadros four years after the 
event; and so the fact may be read in the pro¬ 
cess of Xavier’s canonization. Possessed of 
so admirable a gift, his progress in the con¬ 
version of these once contemptuous people is 
the less surprising. Their city became the 
principal seat of learning in Japan, and of 
course, therefore, the great theatre of contro¬ 
versial debate. Of these polemics there re¬ 
mains a record of no doubtful authenticity, 
from which disputants of higher name than 
those of Amanguchi might take some useful 
lessons in the dialectic art. Thrusts, better 
made or more .skilfully parried, are seldom to 
be witnessed in the schools of Oxford or of- 
Cambridge. 

In the midst of controversies with men, Xa¬ 
vier again heard that inward voice to which 
he never answered but by instant and unhe¬ 
sitating submission. It summoned him to 
Fucheo, the capital of the kingdom of Bungo; 
a city near the sea, and having for its port a 
place called Figer, where a rich Portuguese 
merchant ship was then lying. At the approach 
of the saint (Tor such he was now universally 
esteemed) the vessel thundered from all her 
guns such loud and repeated discharges, that 
the startled sovereign despatched messengers 
from Fucheo to ascertain the cause of so uni¬ 
versal an uproar. Nothing could exceed the 
astonishment with which they received the ex¬ 
planation. It was impossible to convey to the 
monarch’s ear so extravagapt a tale. A royal 
salute for the most abject of lazars—fora man, 
to use their own energetic language—“so ab¬ 
horred of the earth, that the very vermin which 
crawled over him loathed their wretched fare.” 
If mortal man ever rose or sunk so far as to 
discover, without pain, that his person was the 


object of disgust to others, then is there one 
form of self-dominion in which Francis Xavier 
has been surpassed. Yielding with no per¬ 
ceptible reluctance to the arguments of his 
countrymen, and availing himself of the re¬ 
sources at their command, he advanced to 
Fucheo, preceded by thirty Portuguese clad in 
rich stufis, and embellished with chains of 
gold and precious stones. “Next came, and 
and next did go,” in their gayest apparel, the 
servants and slaves of the merchants. Then 
appeared the apostle of the Indies himself, 
resplendent in green velvet and golden bro¬ 
cade. Chinese tapestry, and silken flags of 
every brilliant colour, covered the pinnace 
and the boats in which they were rowed up to 
the city, and the oars rose and fell to the sound 
of trumpets, flutes, and hautboys. As the pro¬ 
cession drew near to the royal presence, the 
commander of the ship marched bareheaded, 
and carrying a wand as the esquire or major- 
domo of the father. Five others of her prin¬ 
cipal officers, each bearing sornt costly article, 
stepped along, as proud to do such service; 
while he, in honour of whom it was rendered, 
moved onwards with the majestic gait of some 
feudal chieftain marshalling his retainers, with 
a rich umbrella over him. He traversed a 
double file of six hundred men-at-arms drawn 
up for his reception, and interchanged compli¬ 
mentary harangues with his royal host, with 
all the grace and dignity of a man accustomed 
to shine in courts, and to hold intercourse with 
princes. 

His majesty of Bungo seems to have borne 
some resemblance to our own Henry the Eighth, 
and to have been meditating a revolt from the 
Saco and his whole spiritual dynasty. Much 
he said at the first interview, to which no ortho¬ 
dox bonze could listen with composure. It 
drew down even on his royal head the rebuke 
of the learned Faxiondoho. “ How,” exclaimed 
that eminent divine, “dare you undertake the 
decision of any article of faith without having 
studied at the University of Fianzima, where 
alone are to be learned the sacred mysteries 
of the gods ! If you are ignorant, consult the 
doctors appointed to teach you. Here am I, 
ready to impart to you all necessary instruction. 
Anticipating the slow lapse of three centuries, 
the very genius of a university of still higher 
pretensions than that of Fianzima breathed 
through the lips of the sage Faxiondono. But 
the great “Tractarian” of Bungo provoked re¬ 
plies most unlike those by which his modern 
successors are assailed. Never was king sur¬ 
rounded by a gayer circle than that which then 
glittered at the court of Fucheo. The more 
the bonze lectured on his own sacerdotal autho¬ 
rity, the more laughed they. The king himself 
condescended to aid the general merriment, 
and congratulated his monitor on the convinc¬ 
ing proof he had given of his heavenly mission, 
by the display of an infernal temper. To 
Xavier he addressed himself in a far different 
spirit. On his head the triple crown might 
have lighted without allaying the thirst of his 
soul for the conversion of mankind; and the 
European pomp with which he was for the 
moment environed, left him still the same liv¬ 
ing martyr to the faith' it was his one object to 



133 


IGNATIUS LOYOLA AND HIS ASSOCIATES. 


diffuse. His rich apparel, and the blandish¬ 
ments of the great, served only to present to 
him, in a new and still more impressive light, 
tne vanity of all sublunary things. He preached, 
catechized, and disputed, with an ardour and 
perseverance which threatened his destruction, 
and alarmed his affectionate followers. “ Care 
not for me,” was his answer to their expostu¬ 
lations ; “ think of me as a man dead to bodily 
comforts. My food, my rest, my life, are to 
rescue, from the granary of Satan, the souls 
for whom God has sent me hither from the 
ends of the earth.” To such fervour the 
bonzes of Fucheo could offer no effectual re¬ 
sistance. One of the most eminent of their 
number cast away his idols and became a 
Christian. Five hundred of his disciples im¬ 
mediately followed his example. The king 
himself, a dissolute unbeliever, was moved so 
far (and the concessions of the rulers of the 
earth must be handsomHy acknowledged) as 
to punish the crimes he still practised and to 
confess that the very face of the saint was as a 
mirror, reflecting by the force of contrast all 
the hideousness of his own vices. Revolting, 
indeed, they were, and faithful were the rebukes 
of the tongue, no less than the countenance of 
Xavier. A royal convert was about to crown 
his labours, and the worship of Xaca and 
Amida seemed waning to its close. It was an 
occasion which demanded every sacrifice; nor 
was the demand unanswered. 

For thirty years the mysteries of the faith 
of the bonzes had been taught in the most 
celebrated of their colleges, by a doctor who 
had fathomed all divine and human lore; and 
who, except when he came forth to utter the 
oracular voice of more than earthly wisdom, 
withdrew from the sight of men into a sacred 
retirement, there to hold high converse with 
the immortals. Fucarondono, for so he was 
called, announced his purpose to visit the city 
and palace of Fucheo. As when, in the 
agony of Argamemnon’s camp, the son of 
Thetis at length grasped his massive spear, 
and the trembling sea-shores resounded at his 
steps—so advanced to the war of words the 
great chieftain of Japanese theology, and so 
rose the cry of anticipated triumph from the 
rescued bonzes. Terror seized the licentious 
king himself, and all foreboded the overthrow 
of Xavier and Christianity. “Do you know, 
or rather, do you remember me?” was the in¬ 
quiry Avith which this momentous debate was 
opened. “I never saw you till now,” answered 
the saint. “ A man who has dealt with me a 
thousand times, and who pretends never to 
have seen me, will be no difficult conquest,” 
rejoined the most profound of the bonzes. 
“ Have you left any of the goods which I bought 
of you at the port of Frenajona?”—“I was 
never a merchant,” said the missionary, “nor 
was I ever at Frenajona.”—“ What a wretched 
memory!” was the contemptuous reply; “it is 
precisely five hundred years to-day since you 
and I met at that celebrated mart, when, by the 
same token, you sold ms a hundred pieces of 
silk, and an excellent bargain I had of it.” 
From the transmigration of the soul the sage 
proceeded to unfold the other dark secrets of 
nature—such as the eternity of matter, the 


spontaneous self formation of all organized be¬ 
ings, and the progressive cleansing of the hu¬ 
man spirit in the nobler and holier, until they 
attain to a perfect memory of the past, and are 
enabled to retrace their wanderings from one 
body to another through all preceding ages— 
looking down from the pinnacles of accumu¬ 
lated wisdom on the grovelling multitude, 
whose recollections are confined within the 
narrow limits of their latest corporeal exist¬ 
ence. That Xavier refuted these perplexing 
arguments, we are assured by a Portuguese 
bystander who witnessed the debate; though 
unhappily no record of his arguments has 
come down to us. “ I have,” says the histo¬ 
rian, “ neither science nor presumption enough 
to detail the subtle and solid reasonings by which 
the saint destroyed the vain fancies of the 
bonze.” 

Yet the victory was incomplete. Having 
recruited his shattered forces, and accompanied 
by no less than three thousand bonzes, Fu¬ 
carondono returned to the attack. On his side, 
Xavier appeared in the field of controversy at¬ 
tended by the Portuguese officers in their rich¬ 
est apparel. They soon uncovered in his pre¬ 
sence, and knelt when they addressed him. 
Their dispute now turned on many a knotty 
point;—as, for example, Why did Xavier cele¬ 
brate masses for the dead, and yet condemn 
the orthodox Japanese custom of giving to the 
bonze bills of exchange payable in their fa¬ 
vour'? So subtle and difficult were their in¬ 
quiries, that Xavier and his companion, the 
reporter of the dispute, were compelled to be¬ 
lieve that the spirit of evil had suggested them ; 
and that they were successfully answered is 
ascribed to the incessant prayers which, during 
the whole contest, the Christians offered for 
their champion. Of this second polemical 
campaign we have a minute and animated ac¬ 
count. It may be sufficient to extract the con¬ 
clusion of the royal moderator. “For my own 
part,” he said, “as far as I can judge, I think 
that father Xavier speaks rationally, and that 
the rest of you don’t know what you are talk¬ 
ing about. Men must have clear heads or less 
violence than you have to understand these 
difficult questions. If you are deficient in 
faith, at least employ your reason, which might 
teach you not to deny truths so evident; and 
do not bark like so many dogs.” So saying, 
the king of Fungo dissolved the assembly. 
Royal and judicious as his award appears to 
have been, our Portuguese chronicler admits 
that the disputants on either side returned with 
opinions unchanged; and that, from that day 
forward, the work of conversion ceased. He 
applies himself to find a solution of the pro¬ 
blem, why men who had been so egregiously 
refuted should cling to their errors, and why 
they should obstinately adhere to practices so 
irrefragably proved to be alike foolish and 
criminal. The answer, let us hope, is, that 
the obstinacy of the people of Fungo was a 
kind of lusus naturse, a peculiarity exclusively 
their own; that other religious teachers are 
more candid than the bonzes of Japan, and that 
no professor of divinity could elsewhere be 
found so obstinately wedded to his own doc¬ 
trines as was the learned Fucarondono. 

M 




134 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WFJTINGS. 


In such controversies, and in doing the work 
of an evangelist in every other form, Xavier 
saw the third year of his residence at Japan 
gliding away, when tidings of perplexities at 
the mother church of Goa recalled him thither; 
across seas so wide and stormy, that even the 
sacred lust of gold hardly braved them in that 
infancy of the art of navigation. As his ship 
drove before the monsoon, dragging after her 
a smaller bark which she had taken in tow, 
the connecting ropes were suddenly burst 
asunder, and in a few minutes the two vessels 
were no longer in sight. Thrice the sun rose 
and set on their dark course, the unchained 
elements roaring as in mad revelry around 
them, and the ocean seething like a caldron. 
Xavier’s shipmates wept over the loss of friends 
and kindred in the foundered bark, and shud¬ 
dered at their own approaching doom. He 
also wept; but his were grateful tears. As 
the screaming whirlwind swept over the abyss, 
the present deity was revealed to his faithful 
worshipper, shedding tranquillity, and peace, 
and joy over the sanctuary of a devout and 
confiding heart. “ Mourn not, my friend,” was 
his gay address to Edward de Gama, as he la¬ 
mented the loss of his brother in the bark; 
“before three days, the daughter will have re¬ 
turned to her mother.” They w'ere weary and 
anxious days; but, as the third drew towards 
a close, a sail appeared in the horizon. Defy¬ 
ing the adverse winds, she made straight to¬ 
wards them, and at last dropped alongside, as 
calmly as the sea-bird ends her flight, and 
furls her ruffled plumage on the swelling surge. 
The cry of miracle burst from every lip; and 
well it might. There was the lost bark, and 
not the bark only, but Xavier hirnself on board 
her! What though he had ridden out the tem¬ 
pest in the larger vessel, the stay of their 
drooping spirits, he had at the same time been 
in the smaller ship, performing there also the 
same charitable office; and yet, when the two 
hailed and spoke each other, there was but one 
Francis Xavier, and he composedly standing 
by the side of Edward de Gama on the deck of 
the “ Holy Cross.” Such was the name of the 
commodore’s vessel. For her services on this 
occasion, she obtained a sacred charter of im¬ 
munity from risks of every kind; and as long 
as her timbers continued sound, bounded 
merrily across seas in which no other craft 
could have lived. 

During this wondrous voyage, her deck had 
often been paced in deep conference by Xavier 
and Jago de Pereyra, her commander. Though 
he pursued the calling of a merchant, he had, 
says the historian, the heart of a prince. Two 
great objects expanded the thoughts of Pereyra 
—the one, the conversion of the Chinese em¬ 
pire ; the other, his own appointment as am¬ 
bassador to the celestial court at Pekin. In 
our puny days, the dreams of traders in the 
east are of smuggling opium. But in the six¬ 
teenth century, no enterprise appeared to them 
too splendid to contemplate, or too daring to 
hazard. Before the “HolyCross” had reached 
Goa, Pereyra had pledged his whole fortune, 
Xavier his influence and his life, to this 
gigantic adventure. In the spring of the fol¬ 
lowing year, the apostle and the ambassador 


(for so far the project had in a few months 
been accomplished) sailed from Goa in the 
“ Holy Cross” for the then unexplored coasts 
of China. As they passed Malacca, tidings 
came to Xavier of the tardy though true fulfil¬ 
ment of one of his predictions. Pestilence, the 
minister of di vine vengeance, was laying waste 
that stiff-necked and luxurious people; but the 
wo he had foretold he was the foremost to al¬ 
leviate. Heedless of his own safety, he raised 
the sick in his arms and bore them to the hos¬ 
pitals. He esteemed no time, or place, or 
office, too sacred to give way to this u r ork of 
mercy. Ships, colleges, churches, all at his 
bidding became so many lazarettos. Night 
and day he lived among the diseased and 
dying, or quitted them only to beg food or 
medicine, from door to door, for their relief. 
For the moment, even China was forgotten; 
nor would he advance a step though it were to 
convert to Christianity a third part of the hu¬ 
man race, so long as one victim of the plague 
demanded his sympathy, or could be directed 
to an ever-present and still more compassionate 
Comforter. The career of Xavier (though he 
knew it not) was now drawing to a close; and 
with him the time was ripe for practising 
those deeper lessons of wisdom which he had 
imbibed from his long and arduous discipline. 

With her cables bent lay the “Holy Cross” 
in the port of Malacca, ready at length to con¬ 
vey the embassage to China, when a difficulty 
arose, which not even the prophetic spirit of 
Xavier had foreseen. Don Alvaro d’Alayde, 
the governor, a grandee of high rank, regarded 
the envoy and his commission with an evil 
eye. To represent the crown of Portugal to 
the greatest of earthly monarchs was, he 
thought, an honour more meet for a son of the 
house of Alayde, than fora man who had risen 
from the very dregs of the people. The ex¬ 
pected emoluments also exceeded the decen¬ 
cies of a cupidity less than noble. He became 
of opinion that it was not for the advantage of 
the service of King John III., that the expedi¬ 
tion should advance. Pereyra appeared be¬ 
fore him in the humble garb of a suitor, with 
the offer of thirty thousand crowns as a bribe. 
All who sighed for the conversion, or for the 
commerce of China, lent the aid of their inter¬ 
cessions. Envoys, saints, and merchants, 
united their prayers in vain. Brandishing his 
cane over their heads, Alvaro swore that, so 
long as he was governor of Malacca and cap- 
tain-general of the seas of Portugal, the em¬ 
bassy should move no farther. Week after 
week was thus consumed, and the season was 
fast wearing away, when Xavier at length re¬ 
solved on a measure to be justified even in his 
eyes only by extreme necessity. A secret of 
high significance had been buried in his 
bosom since his departure from Europe. The 
time for the disclosure of it had come. He 
produced a papal brief, investing him with the 
dignity and the powers of apostolical nuncio 
in the east. One more hindrance to the con¬ 
version of China, and the church would clothe 
her neck with thunders. Alvaro was still un¬ 
moved; and sentence of excommunication 
was solemnly pronounced against him and his 
abettors. Alvaro answered by sequestering 




135 


IGNATIUS LOYOLA AND HIS ASSOCIATES. 


ihe “ Holy Cross'’ herself. Xavier, wrote let¬ 
ters of complaint to the king. Alvaro inter¬ 
cepted them. One appeal was still open to 
the vicar of Christ. Prostrate before the altar, 
he invoked the aid of Heaven; and rose with 
purposes confirmed, and hopes reanimated. 
In the service of Alvaro, though no longer 
bearing the embassy to China, the “Holy 
Cross ’ was to be despatched to Sancian, an 
island near the mouth of the Canton river, to 
which the Portuguese were permitted to resort 
for trade. Xavier resolved to pursue his 
voyage so far, and thence proceeded to Macao 
to preach the gospel there. Imprisonment was 
sure to follow. But he should have Chinese 
fellow-prisoners. These at least he might con¬ 
vert; and though his life would pay the forfeit, 
he should leave behind him in these first Chris¬ 
tians a band of missionaries who would pro¬ 
pagate through their native land the faith he 
should only be permitted to plant. 

It was a compromise as welcome to Alvaro 
as to Xavier himself. Again the “ Holy Cross” 
prepared for sea; and the apostle of the Indies, 
followed by a grateful and admiring people, 
passed through the gates of Malacca to the 
beach. Falling on his face to the earth, he 
poured forth a passionate though silent prayer. 
His body heaved and shook with the throes 
of that agonizing hour. What might be the 
fearful portent none might divine, and none 
presumed to ask. A contagio'us terror passed 
from eye to eye, but every voice was hushed. 
It was as the calm preceding the first thunder 
peal which is to rend the firmament. Xavier 
arose, his countenance no longer beaming with 
its accustomed grace and tenderness, but glow¬ 
ing with a sacred indignation, like that of 
Isaiah when breathing forth his inspired me¬ 
naces against the king of Babylon. Standing 
on a rock amidst the waters, he loosed his 
shoes from otf his feet, smote them against 
each other with vehement action, and then 
casting them from him, as still tainted with 
the dust of that devoted city, he leaped bare¬ 
footed into the bark, which bore him away for 
ever from a place from which he had so long 
and vainly laboured to avert her impending 
doom. 

She bore him, as he had projected, to the 
island of Sancian. It was a mere commercial 
factory; and the merchants who passed the 
trading season there, vehemently opposed his 
design of penetrating farther into China. True 
he had ventured into the forest, against the 
tigers which infested it, with no other weapon 
than a vase of holy water; and the savage 
beasts, sprinkled with that sacred element, had^ 
for ever fled the place: but the mandarins were 
fiercer still than they, and would avenge the 
preaching of the saint on the inmates of the 
factory—though most guiltless of any design 
but that of adding to their heap of crowns and 
moidores. Long years had now passed away 
since the voice of Loyola had been heard on 
the banks of the Seine urging the solemn in¬ 
quiry, “ What shall it profit.” But the words 
still Vang on the ear of Xavier, and were still 
repeated, though in vain to his worldly asso¬ 
ciates at Sancian. They sailed away with 
their cargoes, leaving behind them only the 


“Holy Cross,” in charge of the officers of Al¬ 
varo, and depriving Xavier of all means of 
crossing the channel to Macao. They left him 
destitute of shelter and of food, but not of hope. 
He had heard that the king of Siam meditated 
an embassy to China for the following year; 
and to Siam he resolved to return in Alvaro’s 
vessel, to join himself, if possible, to the Sia¬ 
mese envoys, and so at length force his way^ 
into the empire. 

But his earthly toils and projects were now 
to cease for ever. The angel of death appeared 
with a summons, for which, since death first 
entered our world, no man was ever more tri¬ 
umphantly prepared. It found him on board the 
vessel on the point of departing for Siam. At his 
own request he was removed to the shore, that 
he might meet his end with the greater compo¬ 
sure. Stretched on the naked beach, with the 
cold blasts of a Chinese winter aggravating 
his pains, he contended alone with the agonies 
of the fever which wasted his vital power. It 
was a solitude and an agony for which the 
happiest of the sons of men might well have 
exchanged the dearest society and the purest 
of the joys of life. It was an agony in which 
his still uplifted crucifix reminded him of a far 
more awful wo endured for his deliverance; 
and a solitude thronged by blessed ministers 
of peace and consolation, visible in all their 
bright and lovely aspects to the now unclouded 
eye of faith; and audible to the dying martyr 
through the yielding bars of his mortal prison- 
house, in strains of exulting joy till then un¬ 
heard and unimagined. Tears burst from his 
fading eyes, tears of an emotion too big for 
utterance. In the cold collapse of death his 
features were for a few brief moments irra¬ 
diated as with the first beams of approaching 
glory. He raised himself on his crucifix, and 
exclaiming, In te, Domine, speravi—non con- 
fundar in xternum! he bowed his head and 
died. 

Why consume many words in delineating a 
character which can be disposed of in three? 
Xavier was a fanatic, a papist, and a Jesuit. 
Comprehensive and introvertible as the climax 
is, it yet does not exhaust the censures to which 
his name is obnoxious. His understanding, 
that is, the mere cogitative faculty, was defi¬ 
cient in originality, in clearness, and in force. 
It is difficult to imagine a religious dogma 
which he would not have embraced, at the 
command of his teachers, with the same in¬ 
fantine credulity with which he received the 
creeds and legends they actually imposed upon 
him. His faith was not victorious over doubt; 
for doubt never for one passing moment as¬ 
sailed it. Superstition might boast in him one 
of the most complete as well as one of the most 
illustrious of her conquests. She led him 
through a land peopled with visionary forms, 
and resounding with ideal voices—a land of 
prodigies and portents, of ineffable discourse 
and unearthly melodies. She bade him look 
on this fair world as on some dungeon unvi- 
sited by the breath of heaven ; and on the glo¬ 
rious face of nature, and the charms of social 
life, as so many snares and pitfalls for his feet* 
At her voice he starved and lacerated his body, 
and rivalled the meanest lazar in filth and 







136 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


wretchedness. Harder still, she sent him forth 
to establish among half-civilized tribes a wor¬ 
ship which to them must have become idola¬ 
trous; and to inculcate a morality in which 
the holier and more arduous virtues were 
made to yield precedence to ritual forms and 
outward ceremonies. And yet, never did the 
polytheism of ancient or of modern Rome as¬ 
sign a seat among the dimi-gods to a hero of 
nobler mould, or of more exalted magnanimity, 
than Francis Xavier. 

He lived among men as if to show how little 
the grandeur of the human soul depends on 
mere intellectual power. His it was to demon¬ 
strate with what vivific rays a heart imbued 
with the love of God and man may warm and 
kindle the nations; dense as may be the exha¬ 
lations through which the giant pursues his 
course from the one end of heaven to the 
other. Scholars criticised, wits jested, pru¬ 
dent men admonished, and kings opposed 
him; but on moved Francis Xavier, borne for¬ 
ward by an impulse which crushed and scat¬ 
tered to the winds all such puny obstacles. 
In ten short years, a solitary wanderer, desti¬ 
tute of all human aid—as if mercy had lent 
him wings, and faith an impenetrable armour 
—he traversed oceans, islands, and continents, 
through a track equal to more than twice the 
circumference of our globe; every where 
preaching, disputing, baptizing, and founding 
Christian churches. There is at least one well 
authenticated miracle in Xavier’s story. It is, 
that any mortal man should have sustained 
such toils as he did; and have sustained them 
too, not merely with composure, but as if in 
obedience to some indestructible exigency of 
his nature. “The father master Francis,” 
(the words are those of his associate, Melchior 
Nunez,) “when labouring for the salvation of 
idolaters, seemed to act, not by any acquired 
power, but as by some natural instinct; for he 
could neither take pleasure nor even exist ex¬ 
cept in such employments. They were his 
repose; and when he was leading men to the 
knowledge, and the love of God, however much 
he exerted himself, he never appeared to be 
making any effort.” 

Seven hundred thousand converts (for in 
these matters Xavier’s worshippers are not 
parsimonious) are numbered as the fruits of 
his mission; nor is the extravagance so ex¬ 
treme if the word conversion be understood in 
the sense in which they used it. Kings, rajahs, 
and princes were always, when possible, the 
first objects of his care. Some such conquests 
he certainly made; and as the flocks would 
often follow their shepherds, and as the gate 
into the Christian fold was not made very 
strait, it may have been entered by many thou¬ 
sands and tens of thousands. But if Xavier 
taught the mighty of the earth, it was for the 
sake of the poor and miserable, and with them 
he chiefly dwelt. He dwelt with them on terms 
ill enough corresponding with the vulgar no¬ 
tions of a saint. “ You, my friends,” said he 
to a band of soldiers who had hidden their 
cards at his approach, “ belong to no religious 
order, nor can you pass whole days in devo¬ 
tion. Amuse yourselves. To you it is not 
forbidden, if you neither cheat, quarrel, nor 


swear when you play.” Then good-humour¬ 
edly sitting down in the midst of them, he 
challenged one of the party to a game at 
chess; and was found at the board by Don 
Diego Noragua, whose curiosity had brought 
him from far to see so holy a man, and to 
catch some fragments of that solemn discourse 
which must ever be flowing from his lips. 
The grandee would have died in the belief 
that the saint was a hypocrite, unless by good 
fortune he had afterwards chanced to break in 
on his retirement, and to find him there sus¬ 
pended between earth and heaven in a rapture 
of devotion, with a halo of celestial glory en¬ 
circling his head. 

Of such miraculous visitations, nor indeed 
of any other of his supernatural performances, 
will any mention be found in the letters oi 
Xavier. Such at least is the result of a care¬ 
ful examination of a considerable series of 
them. He was too humble a man to think it 
probable that he should be the depositary of so 
divine a gift; and too honest to advance any 
such claims to the admiration of mankind. In¬ 
deed, he seems to have been even amused 
with the facility with which his friends assented 
to these prodigies. Two of them repeated to 
him the tale of his having raised a dead child 
to life, and pressed him to reveal the truth. 
“ What!” he replied, “ I raise the dead !” “ Can 
you really believe such a thing of a wretch 
like me?” Then smiling, he added, “They 
did indeed place before me a child. They 
said it was dead, which perhaps was not the 
case. I told him to get up, and he did so. Do 
you call that a miracle?” But in this matter 
Xavier was not allowed to judge for himself. 
He was a Thaumaturgus in his own despite; 
and this very denial is quoted by his admirers 
as a proof of his profound humility. Could 
he by some second sight have read the bull of 
his own canonization, he would doubtless, in 
defiance of his senses, have believed (for be¬ 
lief was always at his command) that the 
church knew much better than he did; and 
that he had been reversing the laws of nature 
without perceiving it; for at the distance of 
rather more than a half century from his death, 
Pope Urban VIII., with the unanimous assent 
of all the cardinals, patriarchs, archbishops, 
and bishops, in sacred conclave assembled, 
pledged his papal infallibility to the miracles 
already recorded, and to many more. And 
who can be so skeptical as to doubt their 
reality, when he is informed that depositions 
taken in proof of them were read before that 
august assembly; and that the apotheosis was 
opposed there by a learned person, who ap¬ 
peared at their bar in the character and with 
the title of “ the devil’s advocate.” A scoffer 
might indeed suggest that the lawyer betrayed 
the cause of his client if he really laboured to 
dispel illusions, and that the father of lies may 
have secretly instructed his counsel to make a 
sham fight of it, in order that one lie the more 
might be acted in the form of a new idol wor¬ 
ship. Without exploring so dark a question, 
it may be seriously regretted that such old 
wives’ fables have been permitted to sully 
the genuine history of many a man of whom 
the world was not orthy, and of none more 




IGNATIUS LOYOLA AND HIS ASSOCIATES. 


137 


than Francis Xavier. They have long ob¬ 
scured his real glory, and degraded him to the 
low level of a vulgar hero of ecclesiastical ro¬ 
mance. Casting away these puerile embel¬ 
lishments, refused the homage due to genius 
and to learning, and excluded from the number 
of those who have aided the progress of spec¬ 
ulative truth, he emerges from those lower re¬ 
gions, clad with the mild brilliancy, and re¬ 
splendent in the matchless beauty which be¬ 
long to the human nature, when ripening fast 
into a perfect union with the divine. He had 
attained to that childlike affiance in the Author 
of his being, which gives an unrestrained play 
to every blameless impulse, even when that 
awful presence is the most habitually felt. 
His was a sanctity which, at fitting seasons, 
could even disport itself in jests and trifling. 
No man, however abject his condition, disgust¬ 
ing his maladies, or hateful his crimes, ever 
turned to Xavier without learning that there 
was at least one human heart on which he 
might repose with all the confidence of a bro¬ 
ther’s love. To his eye the meanest and the 
lowest reflected the image of Him whom he 
followed and adored; nor did he suppose that 
he could ever serve the Saviour of mankind so 
acceptably as by ministering to their sorrows, 
and recalling them into the way of peace. It 
is easy to smile at his visions, to detect his 
errors, to ridicule the extravagant austerities 
of his life; and even to show how much his 
misguided zeal eventually counteracted his 
own designs. But with our philosophy, our 
luxuries, and our wider experience, it is not 
easy for us to estimate or to comprehend the 
career of such a man. Between his thoughts 
and our thoughts there is but little in common. 
Of our wisdom he knew nothing, and would 
have despised it if he had. Philanthropy was 
his passion, reckless daring his delight; and 
faith glowing in meridian splendour the sun¬ 
shine in which he walked. He judged or felt 
(and who shall say that he judged or felt 
erroneously ?) that the church demanded an 
illustrious sacrifice, and that he was to be the 
victim; that a voice which had been dumb for 
fifteen centuries, must at length be raised 
again, and that to him that voice had been im¬ 
parted; that a new apostle must go forth to 
break up the incrustations of man’s long-hard¬ 
ened heart, and that to hirn that apostolate had 
beed committed. So judging, or so feeling, he 
obeyed the summons of him whom he esteemed 
Christ’s vicar on earth, and the echoes from 
no sublunary region which that summons 
seemed to awaken in his bosom. In holding 
up to reverential admiration such self-sacrifices 
as his, slight, indeed, is the danger of stimulat¬ 
ing enthusiastic imitators. Enthusiasm! our 
pulpits distil their bland rhetoric against it; 
but where is it to be found ? Do not our share 
markets, thronged even by the devout, overlay 
it—and our rich benefices extinguish it—and 
our pentecosts, in the dazzling month of May, 
dissipate it—and our stipendiary missions, and 
our mitres, decked even in heathen lands with 
jewels and with lordly titles—do they not, as 
so many lightning conductors, effectually di¬ 
vert it 1 There is indeed the lackadaisical en¬ 
thusiasm of devotional experiences, and the 

18 


sentimental enthusiasm of religious bazars, 
and the oratorical enthusiasm of charitable 
platforms—and the tractarian enthusiasm of 
well-beneficed ascetics; but in what, except 
the name, do they resemble “ the-God-in-us” 
enthusiasm of Francis Xavier?—of Xavier 
the magnanimous, the holy, and the gay; the 
canonized saint, not of Rome only, but of 
universal Christendom; who, if at this hour 
there remained not a solitary Christian to 
claim and to rejoice in his spiritual ancestry, 
should yet live in hallowed and everlasting re¬ 
membrance ; as the man who has bequeathed 
to these later ages, at once the clearest proof 
and the most illustrious example, that even 
amidst the enervating arts of our modern civil¬ 
ization, the apostolic energy may still burn 
with all its primeval ardour in the human soul, 
when animated and directed by a power more 
than human. 

Xavier died in the year 1552, in the forty- 
seventh year of his age, and just ten years and 
a half from his departure from Europe. During 
his residence in India, he had maintained a 
frequent correspondence with the general of 
his order. On either side their letters breathe 
the tenderness which is an indispensable ele¬ 
ment of the heroic character—an .intense 
though grave affection, never degenerating 
into fondness; but chastened, on the side of 
Xavier by filial reverence, on that of Ignatius 
by parental authority. It was as a father, or 
rather as a patriarch, exercising a supreme 
command over his family, and making laws 
for their future government, that Ignatius 
passed the last twenty years of his life. No 
longer a wanderer, captivating or overawing 
the minds of men by marvels addressed to 
their imagination, he dwelt in the ecclesiastical 
capitol of the west, giving form and substance 
to the visions which had fallen on him at the 
mount of Ascension, and had attended him 
through every succeeding pilgrimage. 

It proved, however, no easy task to obtain 
the re-quisite papal sanction for the establish¬ 
ment of his order. In that age Ihe regular 
clergy had to contend with an almost universal 
unpopularity. To their old enemies, the 
bishops and secular priests, were added the 
wits, the reformers, and the Vatican itself. 
The papa! court not unreasonably attributed to 
their misconduct, a large share of the disasters 
under which the Church of Rome was suffer¬ 
ing. On the principle of opposing new de¬ 
fences to new dangers, the pope had given his 
confidence and encouragement to theTheatins, 
and the other isolated preachers who were 
labouring at once to protect and to purify the 
fold, by diffusing among them their own deep 
and genuine spirit of devotion. It seemed bad 
policy at such a moment to call into existence 
another religious order, which must be re¬ 
garded with equal disfavour by these zealous 
recruits, and by the ancient supporters of the. 
papacy. Nor did the almost morbid prescience 
of the Vatican fail to perceive how dangerous 
a rival, even to the successors of St. Peter, 
might become the general of a society pro¬ 
jected on a plan of such stupendous magnitude. 

Three years, therefore, were consumed by 
Ignatius in useless solicitations. He soughl 

M 2 





138 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


to propitiate, not mere mortal man only, but 
the Deity himself, by the most lavish promises ; 
and is recorded to have pledged himself on 
one day to the performance of three thousand 
masses, if so his prayer might be granted. 
Earth and Heaven seemed equally deaf to his 
offers, when the terrors of Paul III. were effect¬ 
ually awakened by the progress of the reform¬ 
ers in the very bosom of Italy. Ferrara 
seemed about to fall as Germany, England, 
and Switzerland, had fallen ; and the consistory 
became enlightened to see the divine hand in 
a scheme which they had till then regarded as 
the workmanship of man, and as wrought with 
no superhuman purposes. Anxiously and 
with undisguised reluctance, though, as the 
event proved, with admirable foresight, Paul 
III., on the 27th September, 1540, affixed the 
papal seal to the bull “ Regimini,” the Magna 
Charta of the order of Jesus. It affords full 
internal evidence of the misgivings with which 
it was issued. “ Quamvis Evangelio doceamur, 
et fide orthodoxa cognoscamus ac firmiter pro- 
fiteamur, omnes Christi fideles, Romano ponti- 
fici tanquam Capiti, ac Jesu Christi Vicario, 
subesse, ad majorem tamen nostrse societatis 
humilitatem, ac perfectam unius cuj usque 
mortification em, et voluntatum nostrarum 
abnegationem, summopere conducere judica- 
vimus, singulos nos, ultra illud commune vin¬ 
culum, spec-iali voto adstringi, ita ut quidquid 
Romani pontifices, pro tempore existentes, 
jusserint”—“quantum in nobis fuerit exequi 
teneamur.” 

So wrote the pope in the persons of his new 
praetorians; and to elect a general of the band, 
who should guide them to the performance of 
this vow, was the first care of Ignatius. Twice 
the unanimous choice of his companions fell 
on himself. Twice the honour was refused. 
At length, yielding to the absolute commands 
of his confessor, he ascended the throne of 
which he had been so long laying the founda¬ 
tions. Once seated there, his coyness was at 
an end, and he wielded the sceptre as best be¬ 
comes an absolute monarch—magnanimously, 
and with unfaltering decision; beloved, but 
permitting no rude familiarity; reverenced, 
but exciting no servile fear; declining no en¬ 
terprise which high daring might accomplish, 
and attempting none which headlong ambition 
might suggest; self-multiplied in the ministers 
of his will; yielding to them a large and gene¬ 
rous confidence, yet trusting no man whom he 
had not deeply studied ; and assigning to none 
a province beyond the range of his capacity. 

Though not in books, yet in the far nobler 
school of active, and especially of military 
life, Loyola had learned the great secret of go¬ 
vernment; at least of his government. 

It was, that the social affections, if concen¬ 
trated within a well-defined circle, possess an 
intensity and endurance, unrivalled by those 
passions of which self is the immediate object. 
He had the sagacity to perceive, that emotions 
like those with which a Spartan or a Jew had 
yearned over the land and the institutions of 
their fathers—emotions stronger than appetite, 
vanity, ambition, avarice, or death itself— 
might be kindled in the members of his order; 
if he could detect and grasp those mainsprings 


of human action of which the Greek and the 
Hebrew legislators had obtained the mastery 
Nor did he seek them in vain. 

It is with an audacity approaching to the 
sublime that Loyola demands the obedience 
of his subjects—an obedience to he yielded, 
not in the mere outward act, but by the under¬ 
standing and the will. “Non intueamini in 
persona superioris hominem obnoxium errori 
bus atque miseriis, scd Christum ipsum .” “ Su¬ 
perioris vocem ac jussa non secns ac Christi 
vocem excipiti. Ut statuatis vobiscum quid- 
quid superior prrecipit ipsius Dei prmceptum 
esse ac voluntatem.” He who wrote thus had 
not lightly observed how the spirit of man 
groans beneath the weight of its own freedom, 
and exults in bondage if only permitted to 
think that the chain has been voluntarily as¬ 
sumed. Nor had he less carefully examined 
the motives which may stimulate the most 
submissive to revolt, when he granted to his 
followers the utmost liberty in outward things 
which could be reconciled with this inward 
servitude;—no peculiar habit—no routine of 
prayers and canticles—no prescribed system 
of austerities—no monastic seclusion. The 
enslaved soul was not to be rudely reminded 
of her slavery. Neither must the frivolous or 
the feeble-minded have a place in his brother¬ 
hood; for he well knew how awful i-s the 
might of folly in all sublunary affairs. No one 
could be admitted who had worn, though but 
for one day, the habit of any other religious 
order; for Ignatius must be served by virgin 
souls and by prejudices of his own engrafting. 
Stern initiatory discipline must probe the spi¬ 
rits of the professed; for both scandal and 
danger would attend the faintness of any leader 
in the host. Gentler probations must suffice 
for lay or spiritual coadjutors; for every host 
is incomplete without a body of irregular par¬ 
tisans. But the general himself—the centre 
and animating spirit of the whole spiritual 
army—he must rule for life; for ambition 
and cabal will fill up any short intervals of 
choice, and the reverence due to royalty is 
readily impaired by the aspect of dethroned 
sovereigns. He must be absolute; for human 
authority can on no other terms exhibit itself 
as the image of the divine. He must reign at 
a distance and in solitude; for no government 
is effective in which imagination has not her 
work to do. He must be the ultimate deposi¬ 
tary of the secrets of the conscience of each of 
his subjects ; for irresistible power may inspire 
dread but not reverence, unless guided by un¬ 
limited knowledge. No subject of his may 
accept any ecclesiastical or civil dignity; for 
he must be supreme in rank as in dominion. 
And the ultimate object of all this scheme of 
government—it must be vast enough to ex¬ 
pand the soul of the proselyte to a full sense 
of her own dignity; and practical enough to 
provide incessant occupation for his time and 
thoughts; and must have enough of difficulty 
to bring his powers into strenuous activity, 
and of danger to teach the lesson of mutual 
dependence; and there must be conflicts for 
the brave, and intrigues for the subtle, and 
solitary labours for the studious, and offices of 
mercy for the compassionate; and to all must 



IGNATIUS LOYOLA AND HIS ASSOCIATES. 


139 


be offered rewards, both temporal and eternal 
—in this life, the reward of a sympathy ren¬ 
dered intense by confinement, and stimulating 
by secrecy; and in the life to come, felicities 
of which the anxious heart might find the 
assurance in the promises and in the fellow¬ 
ship of the holy and the wise—of men whose 
claims to the divine favour it would be folly 
and impiety to doubt. 

If there be in any of our universities a pro¬ 
fessor of moral philosophy lecturing on the 
science of human nature, let him study the 
constitutions of Ignatius Loyola. They were 
the lruit of the solitary meditations of many 
years. The lamp of the retired student threw 
its rays on nothing but his manuscript, his 
crucifix, Thomas a Kempis, De I/nitatione 
Chnsti , and the New Testament. Any other 
presence would have been a profane intru¬ 
sion ; for the work was but a transcript of 
thoughts imparted to his disembodied spirit 
when, in early manhood, it had been caught 
up into the seventh heavens. As he wrote, a 
lambent flame, in shape like a tongue of fire, 
hovered about his head; and as may be read 
in his own hand, in a still extant paper, the 
hours of composition were past in tears of de¬ 
votion, in holy ardour, in raptures, and amidst 
celestial apparitions. 

Some unconscious love of power, a mind 
bewildered by many gross superstitions, and 
theoretical errors, and perhaps some tinge of 
insanity, may be ascribed to Ignatius Loyola; 
but no dispassionate reader of his writings, or 
of his life, will question his integrity; or deny 
him the praise of a devotion at once sincere, 
habitual, and profound. It is not to the glory 
of the reformers to depreciate the name of their 
greatest antagonist; or to think meanly of him 
to whom more than any other man it is owing 
that the Reformation was stayed, and the 
Church of Rome rescued from her impending 
doom. 

In the language now current amongst us, 
Ignatius might be described as the leader of 
the conservative against the innovating spirit 
of his times. It was an age, as indeed is every 
era of great popular revolutions, when the im¬ 
pulsive or centrifugal forces which tend to 
isolate man, preponderating over the attrac¬ 
tive or centripetal forces which tend to con¬ 
gregate him, had destroyed the balance of the 
social system. From amidst the controversies 
which then agitated the world had emerged 
two great truths, of which, after three hundred 
years’ debate, we are yet to find the reconcile¬ 
ment. It was true that the Christian common¬ 
wealth should be one consentient body, united 
under one supreme head, and bound together 
by a community of law, of doctrine, and of 
worship. It was also true that each member 
of that body must, for himself, on his own re¬ 
sponsibility, and at his own peril, render that 
worship, ascertain that doctrine, study that 
law, and seek the guidance of that Supreme 
Ruler. Between these corporate duties, and 
these individual obligations, there was a seem¬ 
ing contrariety. And yet it must be apparent 
only, and not real; for all truths must be con¬ 
sistent with each other. Here was a problem 
for the learned and the wise, for schools, and 


presses, and pulpits. But it is not by sages, 
nor in the spirit of philosophy, that such pro¬ 
blems receive their practical solution. Wis¬ 
dom may be the ultimate arbiter, but is seldom 
the immediate agent in human affairs. It is 
by antagonist passions, prejudices, and follies, 
that the equipoise of this most belligerent pla¬ 
net of ours is chiefly preserved ; and so it was 
in the sixteenth century. If papal Rome had 
her Brennus, she must also have her Camil- 
lus. From the camp of the invaders arose the 
war-cry of absolute mental independence; 
from the beleaguered host, the watchword of 
absolute spiritual obedience. The German 
pointed the way to that sacred solitude where, 
besides the worshipper himself, none may 
enter; the Spaniard to that innumerable com¬ 
pany which, with one accord, still chant the 
liturgies of remotest generations. Chieftains 
in the most momentous warfare of which this 
earth had been the theatre since the subver¬ 
sion of paganism, each was a rival worthy of 
the other in capacity, courage, disinterested¬ 
ness, and the love of truth, and yet how mar¬ 
vellous the contrast! 

Luther took to wife a nun. For thirty years 
together, Loyola never once looked on the fe¬ 
male countenance. To overthrow the houses 
of the order to which he belonged, was the 
triumph of the reformer. To establish a new 
order on indestructible foundations, the glory 
of the saint. The career of the one was opened 
in the cell, and concluded amidst the cares of 
secular government. The course of life of the 
other, led him from a youth of camps and pa¬ 
laces to an old age of religious abstraction. 
Demons haunted both ; but to the northern vi¬ 
sionary they appeared as foul or malignant 
fiends, with whom he was to agonize in spi¬ 
ritual strife ; to the southern dreamer, as angels 
of light marshalling his way to celestial bless¬ 
edness. As best became his Teutonic honesty 
and singleness of heart, Luther aimed at no 
perfection but such as may consist with the 
every day cares, and the common duties, and 
the innocent delights of our social existence; 
at once the foremost of heroes, and a very 
man; now oppressed with melancholy, and 
defying the powers of darkness, satanic or 
human ; then “ rejoicing in gladness and thank¬ 
fulness of heart for all his abundance;” loving 
and beloved; communing with the wife of his 
bosom, prattling with his children; surren¬ 
dering his overburdened mind to the charms 
of music, awake to every gentle voice, and to 
each cheerful aspect of nature or of art; re¬ 
sponding alike to every divine impulse and to 
every human feeling; no chord unstrung in 
his spiritual or sensitive frame, but all blend¬ 
ing together in harmonies as copious as the 
bounties of Providence, and as changeful as 
the vicissitudes of life. How remote from the 
“perfection” which Loyola proposed to him¬ 
self, and which (unless we presume to distrust 
the bulls by which he was beatified and canon¬ 
ized) we must have supposed him to at¬ 
tained. Drawn by infallible, not less distinctly 
than by fallible limners, the portrait of the 
military priest of the Casa Professa, possesses 
the coid dignity, and the grace of sculpture; 
but is wholly wanting in the mellow tones, the 






140 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


lights aiid shadows, the rich colouring and the 
skilful composition of the sister art. There he 
stands apart from us mortal men, familiar 
with visions which he may not communicate, 
and with joys which he cannot impart. Se¬ 
vere in the midst of raptures, composed in the 
very agonies of pain; a silent, austere, and 
solitary man ; with a heart formed for tender¬ 
ness, yet mortifying even his best affections; 
loving mankind as his brethren, and yet reject* 
ing their sympathy; one while a squalid, care¬ 
worn, self-lacerated pauper, tormenting him¬ 
self that so he might rescue others from sen¬ 
suality; and then, a monarch reigning in 
secluded majesty, that so he might become the 
benefactor of his race, or a legislator, exacting, 
though with no selfish purposes, an obedience 
as submissive and as prompt as is due to the 
King of Kings. 

Heart and soul we are for the Protestant. 
He who will be wiser than his Maker is hut 
seeming wise. He who will deaden one-half 
of his nature to invigorate the other half, will 
become at best a distorted prodigy. Dark as 
are the pages, and mystic the character in 
which the truih is inscribed, he who can deci¬ 
pher the roll will read there, that self-adoring 
pride is the head-string of stoicism, whether 
heathen or Christian. But there is a roll nei¬ 
ther dark nor mystic, in which the simplest 
and the most ignorant may learn in what the 
“ perfection” of our humanity really consists. 
Throughout the glorious profusion of didactic 
precepts, of pregnant apophthegms, of lyric and 
choral songs, of institutes ecclesiastical and 
civil, of historical legends and biographies, of 
homilies and apologues, of prophetic menaces, 
of epistolary admonitions, and of positive laws, 
which crowd the inspired canon, there is still 
one consentient voice proclaiming to man, that 
the world within and the world without him 
were created for each other; that his interior 
life must be sustained and nourished by inter¬ 
course with external things; and that he then 
most nearly approaches to the perfection of his 
nature, when most conversant with the joys 
and sorrows of life, and most affected by them, 
he is yet the best prepared to renounce the one 
or to endure the other, in cheerful submission 
to the will of Heaven. 

Unalluring, and on the whole unlovely as it 
is, the image of Loyola must ever command 
the homage of the world. No other uninspired 
man, unaided by military or civil power, and 
making no appeal to the passions of the multi¬ 
tude, has had the genius to conceive, the 
courage to attempt, and the success to establish, 
a polity teeming with results at once so mo¬ 
mentous and so distinctly foreseen. Amidst 
his ascetic follies, and his half crazy visions, 
and despite all the coarse daubing with which 
the miracle-mongers of his church have de¬ 
faced it, his character is destitute neither of 
sublimity nor of grace. They were men of no 
common stamp with whom he lived, and they 
regarded him with an unbounded reverence. 
On the anniversary of his death Baronius and 
Bellarmine met to worship at his tomb; and 
there, with touching and unpremeditated elo¬ 
quence, joined to celebrate his virtues. His 
successor Laynex was so well convinced that 


Loyola was beloved by the Deity above all 
other men, as to declare it impossible that any 
request of his should be refused. Xavier was 
wont to kneel when he wrote letters to him; to 
implore the divine aid through the merits of 
his “holy father Ignatius,” and to carry about 
his autograph as a sacred relic. In populai 
estimation, the very house in which he once 
dwelt had been so hallowed by his presence, 
as to shake to the foundation if thoughts unbe¬ 
coming its purity found entrance into the mind 
of any inmate. Ot his theopathy, as exhibited 
in his letters, in his recorded discourse, and in 
his “Spiritual Exercises,” it is perhaps difficult 
for the colder imaginations and the Protestant 
reserve of the north to form a correct estimate. 
Measured by such a standard, it must be pro¬ 
nounced irreverent and erotic;—a libation on 
the altar at once too profuse and too little fil¬ 
tered from the dross of human passion. But 
to his fellow men he was not merely benevo¬ 
lent, but compassionate, tolerant, and candid. 
However inflexible in exacting from his chosen 
followers an all-enduring constancy, he was 
gentle to others, especially to the young and 
the weak; and would often make an amiable 
though awkward effort to promote their recrea¬ 
tion. He was never heard to mention a fault 
or a crime, except to suggest an apology for 
the offender. “Humbly to conceal humility, 
and to shun the praise of being humble,” "was 
the maxim and the habit of his later life; and 
on that principle he maintained the unostenta¬ 
tious decencies of his rank as general of his 
order at the Casa Professa; a convent -which 
had been assigned at Rome for their residence. 
There he dwelt, conducting a correspondence 
more extensive and important than any which 
issued from the cabinets of Paris or Madrid. 
In sixteen years he had established twelve Je¬ 
suit provinces in Europe, India, Africa, and 
Brazil; and more than a hundred colleges or 
houses for the professed and the probationers, 
already amounting to many thousands. His 
missionaries had traversed every country, the 
most remote and barbarous, which the enter¬ 
prise of his age had opened to the merchants 
of the west. The devout resorted to him for 
guidance, the miserable for relief, the wise for 
instruction, and the rulers of the earth for suc¬ 
cour. Men felt that there had appeared among 
them one of those monarchs who reign in right 
of their own native supremacy; and to whom 
the feebler wills of others must yield either a 
ready or a reluctant allegiance. It was a con¬ 
viction recorded by his disciples on his tomb, 
in these memorable and significant words: 
“ Whoever thou mayest be who hast portrayed 
to thine own imagination Pompey, or Cnesar, 
or Alexander, open thine eyes to the truth, and 
let this marble teach thee how much greater a 
conqueror than they was Ignatius.” 

Whatever may have been the comparative 
majesty of the Caesarian and the Ignatian con¬ 
quests, it was true of either, that on the death 
of the conqueror the succession to his diadem 
hung long in anxious suspense. Our tale de¬ 
scends from the sublime and the heroic to the 
region of ordinary motives and ordinary men. 
According to the constitution of the order, the 
choice of the general was to be made m a 




IGNATIUS LOYOLA AND HIS ASSOCIATES. 


141 


chapter, of which the fully professed, and they 
alone, were members. Of that body Jago Lay- 
nez was the eldest and most eminent, and from 
his dying bed (so at least it was supposed) he 
summoned his brethren to hold the election at 
the Casa Professa. The citation was unan¬ 
swered. A majority of the whole electoral 
college were detained in Spain by Philip II., 
who was then engaged in his war with the 
papal court; and in this extremity Laynez was 
nominated in the provincial office of vicar- 
general. That promotion is a specific in some 
forms of bodily disease, is as certain as any 
apophthegm in Galen. Full of renovated life, 
the vicar-general at once assumed all the 
powers of his great predecessor, and gave 
prompt evidence that they had fallen into no 
feeble hands. But neither was that a feeble 
grasp in which the keys of St. Peter were held. 
Hot-headed and imperious as he was, Paul IV. 
had quailed in the solemn presence of Loyola; 
but now, as he believed, had found the time 
for arresting the advance of a power which he 
had learned to regard with jealousy. He be¬ 
gan (as an Englishman might express it) by 
putting the vacant generalship into commis¬ 
sion, and assigned to Laynez nothing more 
than a share in that divided rule. A voyage 
to Spain, where in his own country and 
among his own friends his election would be 
secure, was the next resource of the vicar- 
general; but a papal mandate appeared, for¬ 
bidding any Jesuit to quit the precincts of 
Rome. Thus thwarted, Laynez resolved on 
immediately elevating into the class of the 
professed as many of his associates as would 
form a college numerous enough for the choice 
of a head ; but the vigilant old pontiff detected 
and prohibited the design. Foiled in every 
manoeuvre, nothing remained to the aspiring 
vicar but to await the return of peace. It 
came at length, and with it came from Spain 
the electors so long and anxiously expected. 

Lowly was the chamber in which they were 
convened; nor did there meet that day within 
the compass of the seven hills a company, in 
outward semblance, less imposing; and yet, 
scarcely had the assembled Comitia, to whose 
shouts those hills had once re-echoed, ever 
conferred on prostor or proconsul a power 
more real' or more extensive than that which 
those homely men were now about to bestow. 
But Laynez seemed doomed to yet another dis¬ 
appointment. The chapel doors were thrown 
open, and the Cardinal Pacheco appearing 
among them, interdicted, in the name of the 
pope, all farther proceedings, unless they would 
consent to choose their general for three years 
only; and would engage, like other religious 
men, daily to chant the appointed offices of the 
church. What are the limits of unlimited 
obedience 1 When, a century and a half ago, 
our own casuists laboured for an answer to 
that knotty problem, they were but unconscious 
imitators of Jago Laynez and his companions. 
Maugre vows, and pope, and cardinal, they 
forthwith elected him general for life; nor was 
one litany the more sung by the Jesuits for all 
the papal bidding. 

Yet, the formal decencies of the scene, how 
well were they maintained 1 Joyful thanks¬ 


givings on the side of the electors; an aspect 
eloquent with reluctance, grief, and the painful 
sense of responsibility on the part of the new 
general. Is it incredible that some motives 
nobler and more pure than those of mere secu¬ 
lar ambition may have animated Laynez cn 
this occasion ? Probably not; for there are 
few of us in whom antagonist principles do not 
obtain this kind of divided triumph; and the 
testimonies to his virtues are such and so 
many as almost to command assent to their 
substantial truth. Of the twenty-four books of 
the history of Orlandinus, eight are devoted to 
his administration of the affairs of the order. 
They extort a willing acknowledgment, that he 
possessed extraordinary abilities; and a half- 
reluctant admission, that he may have com¬ 
bined with them a more than common degree 
of genuine piety. 

Laynez would seem to have been born to 
supply the intellectual deficiencies of Ignatius. 
He was familiar with the whole compass of 
the theological literature of his age, and with 
all the moral sciences which a theologian was 
then required to cultivate. With these stores 
of knowledge he had made himself necessary 
to the first general. Loyola consulted, em¬ 
ployed, and trusted, but apparently did not 
like him. It is stated by Orlandinus, that there 
was no other of his eminent followers whom 
the great patriarch of the society treated with 
such habitual rigour, and yet none who ren¬ 
dered him such important services. “Do you 
not think,” said Ignatius to him, “that in 
framing their constitutions, the founders of the 
religious orders were inspired 1” “I do,” was 
the answer, “so far as the general scheme and 
outline were concerned.” The inspired saint,* 
therefore, took for his province the compilation 
of the text, the uninspired scholar, the prepara¬ 
tion of the authoritative comment. For him¬ 
self, the lawgiver claimed the praise of having 
raised an edifice, of which the plan and the 
arrangement were divine. To his fellow- 
labourer he assigned the merit of having sup¬ 
ported it by the solid foundation of a learning, 
which, however excellent, was yet entirely hu¬ 
man. An example will best explain this divi¬ 
sion of labour. 

“In theologia legetur Vetus et Novum Tes- 
tamentum,et doctrina scholastica Divi Thomoe” 
—is the text. “Praelegetur etiam magistcr 
sententiarum; sed si videatur temporis decursu, 
alius autor studentibus utilior futurus, ut si 
aliqua summa, vel liber theologi® scholastics?, 
conficeretur, qui nostris temporibus accommo¬ 
dation videretur”—“praelegi potent”—is the 
comment. Ignatius was content that the di 
vine Thomas should be installed among the 
Jesuits as the permanent interpreter of the 
sacred oracles. Laynez, with deeper foresight, 
perceived that the time was coming when they 
must discover a teacher “better suited to 
times.” It was a prediction fulfilled shortly 
after his death, in the person of Molina, who 
was himself the pupil of the second general of 
the order. 

To Laynez belongs the praise or the re¬ 
proach of having revived, in modern times, the 
Molinist or Arminian doctrine. Our latest 
posterity will debase, as our remotest ancestry 



142 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


have debated, the soundness of that creed; but 
that it was “temporibus accommodatior,” few 
will be inclined to dispute. The times evi¬ 
dently required that the great antagonists of 
Protestantism should inculcate a belief more 
comprehensive, and more flexible, than that of 
Augustine or of St. Thomas. And if to the 
adoption of those opinions may be traced much 
of the danger and disrepute to which the society 
was afterwards exposed, to the same cause may 
be ascribed much of the secret of their vitality 
and their strength. 

The doctrines of Molina were hazarded by 
Laynez, even in the bosom of the council of 
Trent; where, though not constitutionally brave, 
he dared the reproach of heresy and Pelagian- 
ism. But, in the noblest theatre for the display 
of eloquence which the world had seen since 
the fall of the Roman commonwealth, he exhi¬ 
bited all the hardihood which a conscious su¬ 
periority in the power of speech will impart to 
the least courageous. Amidst cries of indig¬ 
nation, he maintained the freedom of the will, 
and the ultramontane doctrines, the most 
unwelcome to his audience; and vehemently 
opposed to the demand of more than half of 
Europe for the admission of the laity to the 
cup. He felt that resentment must give way 
to those feelings on which a great speaker sel¬ 
dom relies in vain. He spoke from a position 
best befitting an ostentatious humility, and 
therefore the most remote from the thrones of 
the papal legates, and the ambassadors of 
Christendom. Even those thrones were for a 
moment abandoned. Cardinals, bishops, counts, 
and abbotts, thronged around his chair; gene¬ 
rals and doctors obeyed the same impulse ; and 
• for two successive hours a circle more illus¬ 
trious for rank and learning than ever before 
surrounded the tribune of an orator, rewarded 
his efforts by their profound and silent admi¬ 
ration. He spoke at Paris, and he preached 
at Rome, with a similar applause; and yet, on 
examining the only two of his speeches which 
have been preserved by Orlandinus, it is diffi¬ 
cult to detect the charm which once seduced 
the haughtiest prelate into a passing forgetful¬ 
ness of their dignity. The eloquence of Lay¬ 
nez would appear to have been neither impas¬ 
sioned nor imaginative, nor of that intense 
earnestness which seems to despise the very 
rules by the observance of which it triumphs. 
Luminous argumentation, clothed in transpa¬ 
rent language, and delivered with facility and 
grace, was probably the praise to which he 
was entitled—no vulgar praise indeed; for, 
amidst the triumphs of oratory, few are greater 
or more welcome than that of infusing order, 
without fatigue, into the chaotic thoughts of 
an inquisitive audience. 

Ambition clothed in rags, subtlety under the 
guise of candour, are the offences which the 
enemies of his order have ascribed to Laynez. 
But a man who, in the sixteenth century, re¬ 
fused a cardinal’s hat, (his refusal of the 
papacy is a more apocryphal story,) can hard¬ 
ly have been the victim of a low desire for 
worldly honours; and hypocrisy is a charge 
which every one must bear who has to do 
with opponents incredulous of virtue superior 
to their own. For eighteen years the head of 


a body distrusted and unpopular from its 
fancy, he had neither hereditary rank to av 
the envy which waits on greatness, nor 
lofty daring to which the world is ever pron 
to yield idolatrous homage. In his hands i 
weapons of Ignatius or of Xavier would ha 
been impotent; but he wielded his own w 
address and with admirable effect. To h 
his society were first indebted for their cl 
racteristic doctrine, for the possession and t 
fame of learning, for many enlargements 
their privileges, for a more .intimate allian 
with the papacy, and the more pronounc 
hostility of the reformers. He first establish 
for them that authority in the cabinets of E 
rope, on which, at no distant time, the edifi 
of their temporal power was to rest; and 
was his melancholy distinction to mimt 
among his disciples the infamous Catheri 
of Medici, and her less odious, because ft 
bier, son. lie was associated with them at t 
very time when they were revolving the gre, 
est crime with which the annals of Christe 
dom have been polluted. With the guilt 
that massacre his memory is, however, u 
stained; except so far as the doctrines 
inculcated, in his debates at Paris with Be 
and Peter Martyr, may have taught the so\ 
reigns to think lightly of any bloodshed whi 
should rid the world of a party abhorred 
God, and hateful to the enlightened eye 
man. 

Gifted with extraordinary talents, profou 
learning, flexible address, and captivating el 
quence, Laynez fell short of that standard 
which, alone, men may inscribe their nam 
in the roll sacred to those who have reign 
over their fellow mortals by right divine, 1 
cause a right inherent and indefeasible. Wii 
out the genius to devise, or the glowing p: 
sion to achieve, great things, none may 
associated with those kings of the earth 
whose brows nature herself has set the d 
dem. Far surpassing in mere intellectual 1 
sources both Xavier and Ignatius, the fie 
element native to their souls was uninhabitat 
to his. Laynez was the first, if not the m< 
eminent, example of the results of Loyol: 
discipline ; and illustrates the effect of concc 
trating all the* interests of life, and all t 
affections of the heart, within the narrow c 
cle of one contracted fellowship. It yield 
in him, as it has often produced in others 
vigorous but a stunted development of chan 
ter; a kind of social selfishness and seciior 
virtue; a subordination of philanthropy to t 
love of caste; a spirit irreclaimably servi 
because exulting in its own servitude; a te 
per consistent, indeed, with great actions a 
often contributing to them, but destructive I 
least in ordinary minds) of that free and c 
dial sympathy with man as man;—of the 
careless graces, and of that majestic repo 
which touch and captivate the heart, and 
which must, in part at least, be ascribed t 
sacred fascination exercised over us all by t 
simple records of the life of Him whose nai 
the society of Jesus had assumed. 

On the 2d of July, 1565, the Casa Profes 
usually the scene of a profound stillness, v 
agitated by an unwonted excitement. Men 






IGNATIUS LOYOLA AND HIS ASSOCIATES. 


143 


austere demeanour might be seen there clasp¬ 
ing each other’s hands, and voices habitually 
mute were interchanging hearty congratula¬ 
tions. One alone appeared to takp no share in 
the common joy. As if overpowered by some 
strange and unwelcome tidings, he seemed 
by imploring gestures to deprecate a decision 
against which his paralyzed lips in vain at¬ 
tempted to protest. His age might be nearly 
fifty, his dress mean and sordid, and toil or 
suffering had ploughed their furrows in his 
pallid cheek; but he balanced his tall and still 
graceful figure with a soldier’s freedom, and 
gazed on his associates with a countenance 
cast in that mould which ladies love and art¬ 
ists emulate. They called him Father Francis ; 
and on the death of Laynez their almost unani¬ 
mous suffrage had just hailed him as the third 
general of the order of Jesus. The wish for 
rank and power was never more sincerely dis¬ 
claimed, for never had they been forced on 
any one Avho had a larger experience of their 
vanity. 

In the female line Father Francis was the 
grandson of Ferdinand of Arragon, and there¬ 
fore the near kinsman of the Emperor Charles 
\. Among his paternal ancestry he could 
boast or lament the names of Alexander VI. 
and of Caesar Borgia. Of that house, eminent 
alike for their wealth, their honours, and their 
crimes, he was the lineal representative; and 
had, in early manhood, inherited from his fa¬ 
ther the patrimony and the title of the Dukes 
of Gandia. 

•Don Francis Borgia, as if to rescue the 
name he bore from the infamy of his progeni¬ 
tors, exhaled, even in his childish days, the 
odour of sanctity. With each returning month, 
he cast a lot to determine which he should 
personate of the saints with whose names it 
was studded on the calendar. In his tenth 
year, with a virtue unsung and unconceived 
by the Musx Efonienses, he played at saints so 
perfectly as to inflict a vigorous chastisement 
on his own naked person. It is hard to resist 
the wish that the scourge had been more reso¬ 
lutely wielded by the arm of his tutor. So 
seems to have thought his maternal uncle 
Don John of Arragon, archbishop of Sara¬ 
gossa. Taking the charge of his nepheu r , that 
high-born prelate compelled him to study alter¬ 
nately the lessons of the riding-master and 
those of the master of the sentences; and in 
his nineteenth year sent him to complete his 
education at the court of his imperial cousin. 

Ardent as were still the aspirations of the 
young courtier for the monastic life, no one in 
that gallant circle bore himself more bravely 
in the menage , or sheathed his sword with a 
steadier hand in the throat of the half-maddened 
bull, or more skilfully disputed with his sove¬ 
reign the honours of the tournament. As the 
youthful knight, bowing to the saddle-tree, 
lowered his spear before the “Queen of Beau¬ 
ty,” many a full dark eye beamed with a deeper 
lustre; but his triumph was incomplete and 
worthless unless it won the approving smile 
of Eleonora de Castro. That smile was not 
often refused. But the romance of Don Fran¬ 
cis begins where other romances terminate. 
Foremost in the train of Charles and Isabella, 


j the husband of the fair Eleonora still touched 
his lute with unrivalled skill in the halls of 
the escurial, or followed the quarry across the 
plains of Castile in advance of the most ardent 
falconer. Yet that music was universally se¬ 
lected from the offices of the church; and in 
the very agony of the chase, just as the wheel¬ 
ing hawk paused for his last deadly plunge, 
(genius of Nimrod, listen!) he would avert 
his eyes and ride slowly home, the inventor of 
a matchless effort of penitential self-denial. 

With Charles himself for his fellow pupil, 
Don Francis studied the arts of war and forti¬ 
fication under the once celebrated Sainte Croix, 
and practised in Africa the lessons he had been 
taught;—earning the double praise, that in the 
camp he was the most magnificent, in the field 
the most adventurous, of all the leaders in that 
vaunted expedition. At the head of a troop en¬ 
listed and maintained by himself, he attended 
the emperor to the Milanese and Provence; 
and, in honourable acknowledgment of his 
services, was selected by Charles to lay a re¬ 
port of the campaign before the empress in 
person, at Segovia. Towards her he felt an 
almost filial regard. She had long been the 
zealous patron and the cordial friend of him¬ 
self and of Eleonora; and at the public festi¬ 
vals which celebrated the victories of Charles, 
and the meeting of the states of Castile at To¬ 
ledo, they shone among the most brilliant of 
the satellites by which her throne was en¬ 
circled. 

At the moment of triumph the inexorable 
arm was unbared which so often, as in mock¬ 
ery of human pomp, confounds together the 
world’s bravest pageants and the humiliations 
of the grave. Dust to dust and ashes to ashes, 
but, when the imperial fall, not without one 
last poor assertion of their departed dignity. 
Isabella might not be laid in the sepulchre of 
the kings of Spain, until amidst the funeral 
rites the soldered coffin had been opened, the 
cerements removed, and some grandee of the 
highest rank had been enabled to depose, that 
he had seen within them the very body of the 
deceased sovereign. Such, in pursuance of 
an ancient custom, was the duty confided to 
the zeal of Don Francis Borgia, nor Avas any 
other better fitted for such a trust. The eye, 
noAA r for ever closed, had never turned to him 
but with maternal kindness, and every linea¬ 
ment of that serene and once eloquent counte¬ 
nance Avas indelibly engraven on his memory. 
Amidst the half-uttered prayers Avhich com¬ 
mended her soul to the Divine mercy,- and the 
low dirge of the organ, he advanced with 
streaming eyes, and reverently raised the co¬ 
vering Avhich concealed the secrets of the 
grave, Avhen—but Avhy or how portray the ap 
palling and loathsome spectacle ? That gentle 
broAv, that eloquent countenance, that form so 
lately raised on earth’s proudest throne, and 
extolled Avith an almost adoring homage! Don 
Francis turned from the sight to shudder and 
to pray. 

It Avas the great epoch in the life of Borgia. 
In the eyes of the world, indeed, he may hare 
been unchanged: but in his eyes the Avhole 
aspect of that world Avas altered. Lord of a 
princely fortune, the heir of an illustrious 






144 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


house, the favourite kinsman of the emperor 
of the West, renowned in the very dower of 
his youth as a warrior, a courtier, and a musi¬ 
cian, his home hallowed by conjugal love, and 
gladdened by the sports of his children ; for 
whom had life a deeper interest, or who could 
erect on a surer basis a loftier fabric of more 
brilliant hopes! Those interests and hopes 
he deliberately resigned, and, at the age of 
twenty-nine, bound himself by a solemn vow, 
that in the event of his surviving Eleonora, he 
would end his days as a member of some reli¬ 
gious order. He had gazed on the hideous 
triumph of death and sin over prospects still 
more splendid than his own. For him the 
soothing illusions of existence were no more— 
earth and its inhabitants, withering under the 
curse of their Maker, might put on their empty 
gauds, and for some transient hour dream and 
talk of happiness. But the curse was there, 
and there would it lie, crushing the frivolous 
spirit the most when felt the least, and con¬ 
signing alike to that foul debasement the lovely 
and the brave; the sylph now floating through 
the giddy dance, and the warrow now proudly 
treading the field of victory. 

From such meditations Charles endeavoured 
to recall his'friend to the common duties of 
life. He required him to assume the vice 
royalty of Catalonia, and adorned him with 
the cross of the order of Alcantara, then of all 
chivalric honours the noblest and the most 
highly prized. His administration was firm, 
munificent, and just; it forms the highest era 
of his life, and is especially signalized by the 
same sedulous care for the education of the 
young, which afterwards formed his highest 
praise as general of the order of Jesus. 

Ingenious above all men in mortifying his 
natural affections, Don Francis could not ne¬ 
glect the occasion which his new dignities af¬ 
forded him, of incurring much wholesome con¬ 
tumely. Sumptuous banquets must be given 
in honour of his sovereign, when he could at 
once fast and be despised for fasting. To ex¬ 
hibit himself in penitential abasement before 
the people under his authority, would give to 
penitence the appropriate accompaniment of 
general contempt. On the festival of “the In¬ 
vention of the Holy Cross,” mysteries not unlike 
those of the Bona Dcawere to be celebrated by 
the ladies of Barcelona, when, to prevent the 
profane intrusion of any of the coarser sex, the 
viceroy himself undertook the office of sentinel. 
With a naked dagger in his hand, a young 
nobleman demanded entrance, addressing to 
the viceroy insults such as every gentleman is 
bound, under the heaviest penalty of the laws 
of chivalry, to expiate by blood. A braver 
man did not tread the soil of Spain than Don 
Francis, nor anyone to whom the reproach of 
paltroonery was more hateful. And yet his 
sword did not leap from his scabbard. With 
a calm rebuke, and courteous demeanour, he 
allowed the bravo to enter the sacred precincts 
preferring the imputation of cowardice, though 
stinging like an adder, to the sin of avenging 
himself, and, indeed, to the duty of maintaining 
his lawful authority. History has omitted to 
tell what were the weapons, or what the incan¬ 
tation, by which the ladies promptly ejected 


the insolent intruder, nor has she- recorded 
how they afterwards received their guardian 
knight of Alcantara. Her only care has been 
to excite our admiration for this most illustri¬ 
ous victory in the bosom of Don Francis, of the 
meekness of the saint over the human passions 
of the soldier. 

At the end of four years Don Francis was 
relieved by the death of his father from his 
viceregal office, and assumed his hereditary 
title of Duke of Gandia. His vassals exulted 
in the munificence of their new chief. The 
ancient retainers of his family lived on his 
bounty—cottages, convents, and hospitals, rose 
on his estates—fortresses were built to check 
the ravages of the Morish corsairs, and the 
mansion of his ancestors reappeared in all its 
•ancient splendour. In every work of piety 
and mercy the wise and gentle Eleonora was 
the rival of her lord. But it was the only 
strife which ever agitated the castle of Gandia. 
Austerities were practised there, but gloom 
and lassitude were unknown; nor did the 
bright suns of Spain gild any feudal ramparts, 
within which love, and peace the child of love, 
shed their milder light with a more abiding 
radiance. 

But on that countenance, hitherto so calm 
and so submissive, might at length be traced 
the movements of an inward tempest, with 
which, even when prostrate before the altar, 
the Duke of Gandia strove in vain. Conver¬ 
sant with every form of self-inflicted suffering, 
how should he find strength to endure the im¬ 
pending death of Eleonora ! His was a prayer 
transcending the resources of language and of 
thought; it was the mute agony of a breaking 
heart. But after the whirlwind and the fire, 
was heard the still small voice. It said, or 
seemed to say, “If it be thy will, she shall re¬ 
cover; but not for her real welfare nor for 
thine.” Adoring gratitude swept away every 
feebler emotion, and the suppliant’s grief at 
length found utterance. “ Thy will be done. 
Thou knowest what is best for me. Whom 
have we in heaven but thee, and whom upon 
earth shall we desire in comparison of thee!” 
At the age of thirty-six the Duke of Gandia 
committed to the tomb the frame once animated 
by a spirit from which not death itself could 
separate him. In the sacred retirement to 
which in that event he had devoted his remain¬ 
ing days, Eleonora would still unite her prayers 
to his; and as each of those days should de¬ 
cline into the welcome shadows of evening, one 
stage the more towards his reunion with her 
would have been traversed. 

The castle of Gandia was still hung with the 
funeral draperies when a welcome though un¬ 
expected guest arrived there. It was Peter 
Faber, the officiating priest at the crypt of 
Montmartre, charged by Ignatius with a mis¬ 
sion to promote the cause of Christian educa¬ 
tion in Spain. Aided by his counsels, and by 
the letters of the patriarch, the duke erected on 
his estates a church, a college, and a library, 
and placed them under the care of teachers se¬ 
lected by Ignatius. The sorrows of the duke 
were relieved as his wealth flowed still more 
copiously in this new channel of beneficence; 
and the universities of Alcala and Seville were 





1 mo AOOUVylAirjO, 


140 


enlarged by his bounty with similar founda¬ 
tions. But, as Faber remarked, a still nobler 
edifice was yet to be erected on the soul of the 
founder itself. The first stone of it was laid 
in the duke’s performance of the Spiritual Ex¬ 
ercises. Po the completion of this invisible 
but imperishable building, the remainder of his 
life was inflexibly devoted. 

With Ignatius the duke had long maintained 
a correspondence, in which the stately courte¬ 
sies of Spanish noblemen not ungracefully 
temper the severe tones of patriarchal autho¬ 
rity and filial reverence. Admission into the 
order ol Jesus was an honour for which, in 
this case, the aspirant was humbly content, and 
was wisely permitted long to wait and sue. 
To study the biography, that he might imitate 
the life of Him by whose holy name the society 
was called; to preach in his own household,or 
at the wicket of the nunnery of the ladies of 
St. Clair; and day by day, to place in humiliat¬ 
ing contrast some proof of the divine goodness, 
and some proof of his own demerit, were the 
first probationary steps which the duke was 
required to tread in the toilsome path on which 
he had thus entered. It was a path from which 
Philip, then governing Spain with the title of 
regent, would have willingly seduced him. He 
consulted him on the most critical affairs; 
summoned him to take a high station in the 
states of Castile; and pressed on his accept¬ 
ance the office of grand master of the royal 
household. It was declined in favour of the 
Duke of Alva. Had Gandia preferred the 
duties of his secular rank to those of his reli¬ 
gious aspirations, Spain might have had a 
saint the less and seven provinces the more. 
With the elevation of Alva, the butcheries in 
the Netherlands, the disgrace of Spain, and the 
independence of Holland might have been 
averted. 

Warned by his escape, the duke implored 
with renewed earnestness his immediate ad¬ 
mission into the order; nor was Ignatius 
willing that his proselyte should again incur 
such dangers. At the chapel of his own col¬ 
lege he accordingly pronounced the irrevocable 
vows; a papal bull having dispensed during a 
term of four years with any public avowal of 
the change. They were passed in the final ad¬ 
justment of his secular affairs. He had lived 
in the splendour appropriate to his rank and 
fortune, and in the exercise of the bounty be¬ 
coming his eminence in the Christian common¬ 
wealth. But now all was to be abandoned, 
even the means of almsgiving, for he was himself 
henceforth to live on the alms of others. He gave 
his children in marriage to the noblest houses 
in Spain and Portugal, transferred to his eldest 
son the enjoyment of the patrimonial estates 
of Gandia, and then, at the age of forty, meekly 
betook himself to the study of scholastic di¬ 
vinity, of the traditions of the church, and of 
the canons of the general councils. He even 
submitted to all the rules, and performed all 
the public exercises enforced on the youngest 
student. Such was his piety that the thorny 
fagots of the schoolmen fed instead of smother¬ 
ing the flame; and on the margin of his Tho¬ 
mas Aquinas might be seen some devout aspi¬ 
ration, extracted by his sacred alchemy from 

19 


each subtle distinction in the text. Never be¬ 
fore or since was the degree of doctor in di¬ 
vinity, to which he now proceeded, so hardly 
earned or so well deserved. 

Two of the brothers of the duke had been 
members of the sacred college, and his humility 
had refused the purple offered at the instance 
of the emperor to two of his sons. But how 
should the new doctor avert from his own head 
the ecclesiastical cap of maintenance with 
which Charles was now desirous to replace 
the ducal coronet! He fled the presence of 
his imperial patron; made and executed his 
own testamentary dispositions, delivered his 
last parental charge to his eldest son, and bade 
a final adieu to his weeping family. The gates 
of the castle of Gandia closed on their self- 
banished lord. He went forth, like Francis 
Xavier, chanting the song of David—“ When 
Israel went out of Egypt, and the house of 
Jacob from a strange people,”—adding from 
another strain of the royal minstrel; “ Our 
bonds are broken and we are delivered.” He 
lived for more than twenty years from this 
time, and in his future missions into Spain 
often passed the gates of the castle, but never 
more re-entered them. He became a stranger 
even to his children, never again passing so 
much as a single day in their society, or even 
permitting himself to become acquainted with 
their offspring. 

As the bird set free to her nest, so hasted 
the emancipated duke to take his seat at the 
footstool of Ignatius. Yet in his route through 
Ferrara and Florence, his sacred impatience 
was arrested, and his humility confirmed, by 
the unwejcome honours yielded to him by his 
kinsmen, the reigning sovereigns of those 
duchies. He would have entered Rome by 
night; but in the city of triumphs and ovations, 
the victorious Loyola must exhibit so illus¬ 
trious a captive. Attended by the ambassador 
of Spain, by a prince of the house of Colonna, 
and by a long train of cardinals, priests, and 
nobles, the duke of Gandia advanced in so¬ 
lemn procession to the Casa Professa. There, 
in the presence of his general, his wearied 
spirit found at length the repose which the 
most profuse liberality of fortune had been 
unable to bestow. With tears of joy he kissed 
the feet of the patriarch and of his professed 
brethren, esteeming the meanest office in their 
household an honour too exalted for so un¬ 
worthy an associate; and then, in a general 
confession, poured into the ear of Ignatius 
every secret of his conscience from the dawn 
of life to that long desired hour. 

Such zeal was a treasure too precious to be 
left without some great and definite object; and 
as the duke was still the steward of some of 
this world’s treasure, which he had devoted to 
sacred uses, they were employed in building 
at Rome the church and college afterwards so 
famous as the college de Propaganda Fids, 
Only one secular care still awaited hint. His 
rank as a grandee of Spain, and the cross of 
Alcantara, could not be laid aside without ♦he 
consent of the emperor. It was solicited with 
all the grace of an accomplished courtier, and 
all the fervour of a saint. But while he awaited 
at Rome the answer of Charles, a new alarqft 

N 









146 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


disturbed the serenity of the Casa Professa. 
The dreaded purple was again pressed on him 
with all the weight of papal admonition. To 
avoid it, Gandia fled the presence of the 
pope, and Ignatius returned to Spain, per¬ 
formed a pilgrimage to the castle of Loyola, 
kissed the hallowed ground, and then burying 
himself in a Jesuit college at Ognato, once 
more awaited the decision of the emperor. It 
soon arrived. He was no longer a duke, a 
knight of St. Iago, nor even a Spanish gentle¬ 
man. Solemnly, and in due legal form, he re¬ 
nounced all these titles, and with them all his 
property and territorial rights. Even his secu¬ 
lar dress was laid aside, and his head was 
prepared by the tonsure for the Episcopal 
touch, emblematic of the most awful mystery. 
The astonished spectators collected and pre¬ 
served the holy relics. And now bent in lowly 
prostration before the altar at Ognato, the Fa¬ 
ther Francis had no farther sacrifice to offer 
there, but the sacrifice of a heart emptied of 
all the interests and of all the affections of the 
world. Long and silent was his prayer, but it 
was now unattended with any trace of disorder. 
The tears he shed were such as might have 
bedewed the cheek of the first man before he 
had tasted the bitterness of sin. He rose from 
his knees, bade a last farewell to his attend¬ 
ants; and Father Francis was left alone with 
his Creator. 

It was a solitude not long to be maintained. 
The fame of his devotion filled the Peninsula. 
All who needed spiritual counsel, and who 
wished to indulge an idle curiosity, resorted to 
his cell. Kings sought his advice, wondering 
congregations hung on his lips, and two at 
least of the grandees of Spain imitated his ex¬ 
ample. His spiritual triumphs were daily more 
and more splendid; and, if he might escape 
the still threatened promotion into the college 
of cardinals, might be as enduring as his life. 
The authority of Ignatius, not unaided by some 
equivocal exercise of his ingenuity, at length 
placed Father Francis beyond the reach of 
this last danger. They both went down to the 
grave without witnessing the debasement of 
their order by any ecclesiastical dignity. 

But there was yet one tie to the pomp and 
vanity of this world, which could not be en¬ 
tirely broken. During his viceregal adminis¬ 
tration, Father Francis had on one occasion 
traversed the halls of the castle of Barcelona 
in deep and secret conference with his impe¬ 
rial cousin. Each at that interview imparted to 
the other his design of devoting to religious 
retirement the interval which should intervene 
between the business and the close of life. At 
every season of disappointment Charles re¬ 
verted to this purpose, and abandoned or post¬ 
poned it with each return of success. But 
now, broken with sickness and sorrow, he had 
fixed his residence in a monastery in Estre- 
madura, and summoned the former viceroy of 
Catalonia to the presence of his early friend 
and patron. Falling on his knees, as in times 
of yore, Father Francis offered to impress the 
kiss of homage on the hand which had so 
lately borne the sceptre of half the civilized 
world. But Charles embraced his cousin, and 
compelled him to sit, and to sit covered, by his 


side. Long and frequent were their conversa¬ 
tions; but the record of them transmuted to us 
by the historians of the Order of Jesus, nas but 
little semblance of authenticity. Charles as¬ 
sails, and Borgia defends the new Institute, 
and the imperial disputant of course yields to 
the combined force of eloquence and truth. It 
seems less improbable that the publication of 
Memoirs of the life of the Emperor, to be 
written by himself, was one subject of serious 
debate at these interviews, and that the good 
father dissuaded it. If the tale be true, he has 
certainly one claim the less to the gratitude of 
later times. What seems certain is, that he 
undertook and executed some secret mission 
from Charles to the court of Portugal, that he 
acted as one of the executors of his will, and 
delivered a funeral oration in praise of the de¬ 
ceased emperor before the Spanish court at 
Valladolid. 

From this point, the life of Borgia merges 
in the general history of the order to which he 
had attached himself. It is a passage of his¬ 
tory full of the miracles of self-denial, and of 
miracles in the more accurate acceptation of 
the word. To advance the cause of education, 
and to place in the hands of his own society 
the control of that mighty engine, was the la¬ 
bour which Father* Francis as their general 
chiefly proposed to himself. His success was 
complete, and he lived to see the establish¬ 
ment, in almost every state of Europe, of col¬ 
leges formed on the model of that which he 
had himself formed in the town of Gandia. 

Borgia is celebrated by his admirers as the 
most illustrious of all conquerors of the appe¬ 
tites and passions of our common nature ; and 
the praise, such as it is, may well be conceded 
to him. No other saint in the calendar ever 
abdicated or declined so great an amount of 
worldly grandeur and domestic happiness. No 
other embraced poverty and pain in forms 
more squalid, or more revolting to flesh and 
blood. So strange and shocking are the sto¬ 
ries of his flagellations, of the diseases con¬ 
tracted by them, and of the sickening prac¬ 
tices by which he tormented his senses, that 
even to read them is of itself no light penance. 
In the same spirit, our applause is demanded 
for feats of humility, and prodigies of obedi¬ 
ence, and raptures of devotion, so extravagant, 
that his biographers might seem to have as¬ 
sumed the office of penitential executors to the 
saint; and to challenge for his memory some 
of the disgust and contempt which when living 
he so studiously courted. And yet Borgia was 
no ordinary man. 

He had great talents with a narrow capa¬ 
city. Under the control of minds more com¬ 
prehensive than his own, he could adopt and 
execute their wider views with admirable ad¬ 
dress and vigour. With rare powers both of 
endurance and of action, he was the prey of a 
constitutional melancholy, which made him 
dependent on the more sanguine spirit of his 
guides for all his aims and for all his hopes; 
but once rescued from the agony of selecting 
his path, he moved along it not merely with 
firmness but with impetuosity. All his im¬ 
pulses came from without; but when once 
given they could not readily be arrested. The 



147 


IGNATIUS LOYOLA AND HIS ASSOCIATES. 


very dejection and self-distrust of his nature 
rendered him more liable than other men to 
impressions at once deep and abiding. Thus 
he was a saint in his infancy at the bidding of 
his nurse then a cavalier at the command of 
• his uncle an inamorato because the empress 
desired it a warrior and a viceroy because 
such was the pleasure of Charles—a devotee 
fiom seeing a corpse in a state of decomposi¬ 
tion a founder of colleges on the advice of 
Peter Faber—a Jesuit at the will of Ignatius— 
and general of the order because his colleagues 
would have it so. Yet each of these charac¬ 
ters, when once assumed, was performed, not 
merely with constancy, but with high and just 
applause. His mind was like a sycophant 
plant, feeble when alone, but of admirable vi¬ 
gour and luxuriance when properly sustained. 
A whole creation of such men would have 
been unequal to the woik of Ignatius Loyola; 
but, in his grasp, one such man could perform 
a splendid though but a secondary service. 
His life was more eloquent than all the homi¬ 
lies of Chrysostom. Descending from one of 
the most brilliant heights of human prosperity, 
he exhibited every where, and in an aspect the 
most intelligible and impressive to his contem¬ 
poraries, the awful power of the principles by 
which he was impelled. Had he lived in the 
times and in the society of his infamous kins¬ 
men, Borgia would not improbably have shared 
their disastrous renown. But his dependent 
nature, moulded by a far different influence, 
rendered him a canonized saint; an honoura¬ 
ble, just and virtuous man; one of the most 
eminent ministers of a polity as benevolent in 
intention as it was gigantic in design; and the 
founder of a system of education pregnant 
with results of almost matchless importance. 
His miracles may be not disadvantageous^ 
compared with those of the Baron Manchau- 
sen; but it would be less easy to find a meet 
comparison for his genuine virtues. They 
triumph over all the silly legends and all the 
real follies which obscure his character. His 
whole mature life was but one protracted mar¬ 
tyrdom, for the advancement of what he es¬ 
teemed the perfection of his own nature, and 
.the highest interests of his fellow-men. Though 
he maintained an intimate personal intercourse 
with Charles IX. and his mother, and enjoyed 
their highest favour, there is no reason to sup¬ 
pose that he was intrusted with their atrocious 
secret. Even in the land of the inquisition he 
had firmly refused to lend the influence of his 
name to that sanguinary tribunal; for there 
was nothing morose in his fanaticism, nor 
mean in his subservience. Such a man as 
Francis Borgia could hardly become a perse¬ 
cutor. His own church raised altars to his 
name. Other churches have neglected or de¬ 
spised it. In that all-wise and all-compassion¬ 
ate judgment, which is uninvaded by our nar¬ 
row prejudices and by our unhallowed feelings, 
his fervent love of God and of man was doubt¬ 
less permitted to cover the multitude of his 
theoretical errors and real extravagances. 
Human justice is severe, not merely because 
man is censorious, but because he reasonably 
distrusts himself, and fears lest his weakness 
should confound the distinctions of good and 


evil. Divine justice is lenient, because there 
alone love can flow in all its unfathomable 
depths and boundless expansion—impeded by 
no dread of error, and diverted by no mis¬ 
placed sympathies. 

To Ignatius, the founder of the order of the 
Jesuits; to Xavier, the great leader in their 
missionary enterprises; to Laynez, the author 
of their peculiar system of theology; and to 
Borgia, the architect of their system of educa¬ 
tion, two names are to be added to complete 
the roll of the great men from whose hands 
their institute received the form it retains to 
the present hour. These are Bellarmine,from 
whom they learned the arts and resources of 
controversy; and Acquaviva, the fifth in num¬ 
ber, but in effect the fourth of their generals— 
who maybe described as the Numa Pompilius 
of the order. There is in the early life of 
Bellarminea kind of pastoral beauty, and even 
in his later days a grace, and a simplicity so 
winning, that it costs some effort to leave such 
a theme unattempted. The character of Ac¬ 
quaviva, one of the most memorable rulers and 
lawgivers of his age, it would be a still greater 
effort to attempt. 

“ Henceforth let no man say,” (to mount on 
the stilts of dear old Samuel Johnson) “come, 

I will write a disquisition on the history, the 
doctrines, and the morality of the Jesuits—at 
least let no man say so who he has not sub¬ 
dued the lust of story-telling.” Filled to their 
utmost limits, lie before us the sheets so re¬ 
cently destined to that ambitious enterprise. 
Perhaps it may be as well thus to have yielded 
to the allurement which has marred the original 
design. If in later days the disciples of Ignatius, 
obeying the laws of all human institutions, 
have exhibited the sure though slow develope- 
ment of the seeds of error and of crime, sown 
by the authors of their polity, it must at least 
be admitted that they were men of no common 
mould. It is something to know that an im¬ 
pulse, which after three centuries is still un¬ 
spent, proceeded from hands of gigantic power, 
and that their power was moral as much as in¬ 
tellectual, or much more so. In our own times 
much indignation and much alarm are thrown 
away on innovators of a very different stamp* 
From the ascetics of the common room, from 
men whose courage rises high enough only to 
hint at their unpopular opinions, and whose 
belligerent passions soar at nothing more dar¬ 
ing than to worry some unfortunate professor, 
it is almost ludicrous to fear any great move¬ 
ment on the theatre of human affairs. When 
we see these dainty gentlemen in rags, and 
hear of them from the snows of the Himma- 
laya, we may begin to tremble. The slave of 
his own appetites, in bondage to conventional 
laws, his spirit emasculated by the indulgences, 
or corroded by the cares of life, hardly daring 
to act, to speak, or to think for himself, man— 
gregarious and idolatrous man—worships the 
world in which he lives, adopts its maxims, 
and tread its be»aten paths. To rouse him from 
his lethargy, and to give a new current to his 
thoughts heroes appear from time to time on 
the verge of his horizon, and hero-worship, 
pagan or Christian, withdraws him for awhile 
from still baser idolatry. To contemplate the 







STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


motives and the career of such a man, may 
teach much which well deserves the knowing; 
but nothing more clearly than this—that no 
one oan have shrines erected to his memory 
in the hearts of men of distant generations un¬ 


less his own heart was an altar on which daily 
sacrifices of fervent devotion, and magnani¬ 
mous self denial, were offered to the only true 
object of human worship. 


TAYLOR’S EDWIN THE FAIR.* 

[Edinburgh Review, 1843.] 


This is a dramatic poem full of life and 
beauty, thronged with picturesque groups, and 
with characters profoundly discriminated. 
They converse in language the most chaste, 
harmonious, and energetic. In due season 
fearful calamities strike down the lovely and 
the good. Yet « Edwin the Fair” is not to be 
classed among tragedies, in the full and exact 
sense of the expression. 

“ To purge the soul by pity and terror,” it is 
not enough that the stage should exhibit those 
who tread the high places of the earth as vic¬ 
tims either of unmerited distress, or of retribu¬ 
tive justice. It is farther necessary that their 
sorrows should be deviations from the usual 
economy of human life. They must differ in 
their origin, and their character, from those ills 
which we have learned to regard as merely 
the established results of familiar causes. 
They must be attended by the rustling of the 
dark wings of fate, or by the still more awful 
march of an all-controlling Providence. The 
domain of the tragic theatre lies in that dim 
region where the visible and invisible worlds 
are brought into contact; and where the wise 
and the simple alike perceive and acknowledge 
a present deity, or demon. It is by the shocks 
and abrupt vicissitudes of fortune, that the 
dormant sense of our dependence on that in¬ 
scrutable power in the grasp of which we lie, 
is quickened into life. It is during such tran¬ 
sient dispersion of the clouds beneath which 
it is at other times concealed, that we feel the 
agency of heaven in the affairs of earth to be a 
reality and a truth. It is in such occurrences 
alone (distinguished in popular language from 
the rest, as providential) that the elements of 
tragedy are to be found in actual or imaginable 
combination. There the disclosure of the 
laws of the universal theocracy imparts to the 
scene an unrivalled interest, and to the actors 
in it the dignity of ministers of the will of the 
Supreme. There each event exhibits some 
new and sublime aspect of the divine energy 
working out the divine purposes. There the 
great enigmas of our existence, receive at 
least a partial solution. There, even amidst 
The seeming triumph of wrong, may be traced 
the dispensation of justice to which the dramat¬ 
ist is bound; and there also extends before his 
view a field of meditation drawn from themes 
of surpassing majesty and pathos. 

* Edwin the Fair: an Historical Drama. By Henry 
Taylor, author of “Philip Van Artevelde.” London: 
12rno. 1842. 


Such is the law to which all the great tragic 
writers of ancient or of modern times have 
submitted themselves—each in his turn as¬ 
suming this high office of interpreting the 
movements of Providence, and reconciling 
man to the mysteries of his being. Thus Job 
is the stoic of the desert—victorious over all 
the persecutions of Satan, till the better sense 
of unjust reproach and undeserved punish¬ 
ment breaks forth in agonies which the de¬ 
scending Deity rebukes, silences, and soothes. 
Prometheus is the temporary triumph over 
beneficence, of a power at once malignant and 
omnipotent, which, at the command of destiny, 
is blindly rushing on towards the universal 
catastrophe which is to overwhelm and ruin 
all things. Agamemnon returns in triumph to 
a home, where, during his long absence, the 
avenging furies have been couching to spring 
at last on the unhappy son of Atreus—every 
hand in that fated house drooping with gore, 
and every voice uttering the maledictions of 
the infernals. CEdipus, and his sons and 
daughters, represent a succession of calamities 
and crimes which would seem to exhaust the 
catalogue of human wretchedness; but each in 
turn is made to exhibit the working of one of 
the most awful of the laws under which we 
live—the visitation of the sins of parents upon 
their children to the third and fourth genera¬ 
tion. Macbeth is seduced by demoniacal pre¬ 
dictions to accomplish the purposes, by violat¬ 
ing the commands of Heaven, and so to me-, 
ditate, to extenuate, and to commit, the crimes 
suggested by the fiend in cruel mockery. 
Hamlet is at once the reluctant minister and 
the innocent victim of the retributive justice 
to the execution of which he is goaded by a 
voice from the world of departed spirits. Lear 
is crushed amidst the ruins of his house, on 
which parental injustice, filial impiety, foul 
lusts, and treacherous murder, had combined 
to draw down the curse of the avenger. Faust 
moves on towards destruction under the guid¬ 
ance of the fiend, who lures him by the pride 
of knowledge and the force of appetite. Wal¬ 
lenstein plunges into destruction, drawing 
down with him the faithful and the good, as a 
kind of bloody sacrifice, to atone for treachery 
to which the aspect of the stars and the predic¬ 
tions of the diviner had impelled him. And so, 
through every other tragic drama which has 
awakened the deeper emotions of the spectator 
or the reader, might be traced the operation of 
the law to which we have referred. How far 







149 


TAYLOR’S EDWIN THE FAIR. 

this universal characteristic of tragedy—the 
perceptible intervention in human affairs of 


powers more than human—is to be discovered 
in “ Edwin the Fair,” the following brief and 
imperfect outline of the plot may sufficiently 
determine. 

In the fresh and dewy dawn of life, Edwin 
and Elgiva had been wont to rove— 

V trough dale, with interlacing arms. 

And thnd the thickets where wild roses grow, 

Entangled with each other like themselves.” 

But their sun had scarcely risen above the 
eastern horizon when the dreams of childhood 
faded away before the illusions of youth. He 
ascended the Anglo-Saxon throne, and she 
plighted her troth to Earl Leolf, the command¬ 
er of the English armies. The earl was “a 
man in middle age, busy and hard to please,” 
and not happy in the art of pleasing. Such, 
at least, was the more deliberate opinion or 
feeling of Elgiva. In a day of evil augury to 
herself, and to her house, the inconstant maid¬ 
en crushed the hopes of her grave, though 
generous suitor, to share the crown of her early 
playmate. 

It sat neither firmly nor easily on his brows. 
Athulf, the brother, and Leolf, the discarded 
suitor of the queen, were the chief opponents 
of the powerful body which, under the guidance 
of Dunstan, were rapidly extending over the 
monarchy, and the Church of England, the 
authority of the monastic orders. In the ap¬ 
proaching alliance of Athulf’s family to Edwin, 
the abbot of Glastonbury foresaw the transfer, 
to a hostile party, of his own dominion over 
the mind of his young sovereign. Events had 
occurred to enhance and justify his solicitude. 
Athulf’s energy had enabled Edwin to baffle 
the pretexts by which Dunstan had delayed 
his coronation. It was celebrated with becom¬ 
ing splendour, and was followed by a royal 
banquet. The moment appeared to the king 
propitious for avoiding the vigilant eye of his 
formidable minister. He escaped from the 
noisy revels, and flew on the wings of love to 
an adjacent oratory, where, before his absence 
had excited the notice and displeasure of his 
guests, he exchanged with Elgiva the vows 
which bound them to each other till death 
should break the bond. They little dreamed 
how soon it should thus be broken. Resenting 
the indignity of the king’s abrupt desertion of 
the festive board, the assembled nobles deputed 
'the abbot and the archbishop of Canterbury to 
solicit, and if necessary to compel his return. 
They found him in the society of his newly af¬ 
fianced bride, and assailed them with gross 
imputations, which she indignantly repelled by 
an open avowal of her marriage. Availing 
himself of the disorder of the moment, and of 
the canonical objections to their union, founded 
on their too near consanguinity, Dunstan 
caused them to be seized and imprisoned. 
Elgiva was despatched to Chester, the king 
and Athulf being secured in the Tower of 
London. 

Leolf, who had absented himself from the 
coronation, was in command of the royal forces 
at Tunbridge, where he was quickly joined by 
Athulf, who had found the means of escaping 
from prison. The two earls then separated— 


Leolf proceeding to the north, with a part of 
the army, to rescue Elgiva, and Athulf assum¬ 
ing the conduct of the power destined for the 
deliverance of the king. 

Whatever may have been the indignation 
of the confederate lords, their policy dictated 
pacific measures; and to these the archbishop, 
offended and alarmed by the audacity of Dun¬ 
stan, willingly lent himself. He convened a 
synod to deliberate on the validity of the royal 
marriage, and on the propriety of applying to 
Rome for a dispensation. Long and fervent 
debate ensued. The church as represented in 
that holy conclave, had given strong indica¬ 
tions of a conciliatory spirit, when, casting 
himself, in vehement prayer before a crucifix, 
Dunstan invoked the decision of Him whose 
sacred image it bore. An audible voice, which 
seemed to proceed from the cross, (though 
really uttered by a minister of the abbot’s crimes, 
who had been concealed for the purpose with¬ 
in its ample cavity,) forbade the ratification 
of the royal nuptials. Rising from the earth, 
the holy abbot pronounced a solemn excom¬ 
munication of Edwin, Elgiva, and their adhe¬ 
rents, and dismissed the assembly which had 
so vainly attempted to defeat the will of heaven, 
and of heaven’s chosen minister. 

The triumphant Dunstan then proceeded to 
the Tower, to obtain from the captive and ex¬ 
communicated king the abdication of his 
crown. He was answered by indignant re¬ 
proaches, and at length withdrew, but not till 
he had summoned into the royal presence an 
assassin, prepared to bring the controversy to 
a decisive and bloody close. At that instant 
Athulf and his forces burst into the Tower. 
Edwin regained his freedom, and Dunstan fled 
in disguise into Hampshire. 

But the saint of Glastonbury possessed too 
powerful a hold on the attachment and rever¬ 
ence of the multitude, to be thus defeated by 
any blow however severe, or by any exposture 
however disgraceful. A popular insurrection 
in his favour arrested his flight to France. He 
resumed his self-confidence, appeared again 
in his proper character, and lifted up his mitred 
front, with its wonted superiority, in a Wit- 
tenagemot which he convened at Malpas. 
There, surrounded by his adherents and his 
military retainers, he openly denounced war on 
his sovereign. 

Under the guidance of Athulf, the king had 
moved from London towards Chester, to effect 
a junction with Leolf and his army. The at¬ 
tempt was not successful. Impatient of her 
prison, Elgiva had exercised over her jailer 
the spell of her rank and beauty, and had ren¬ 
dered him at once the willing instrument and 
the companion of her escape. Leolf was ap¬ 
prized of her design, and anxious for the safety 
of her who had so ill-requited his devotion, ad¬ 
vanced to meet her, supported only by a small 
party of his personal attendants. They met, 
and, while urging their flight to Leolf’s army, 
were overtaken by a party attached to the cause 
of Dunstan, and slain. 

For this catastrophe Dunstan was not, in in¬ 
tention at least, responsible. Alarmed by in¬ 
telligence of a Danish invasion, he had become 
desirous of a reconciliation witi Fdwin, and 

v 2 








150 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


was making overtures for that purpose. But 
it was now too late. The king, maddened by 
the loss of Elgiva, rushed forward with blind 
and precipitate haste to Mai pas, where the 
body of his murdered wife awaited a royal 
sepulture, and where was intrenched the 
haughty rebel who had brought her down to a 
premature grave. Deaf to every voice but 
that which from the inmost recesses of his 
soul cried for revenge, Edwin plunged wildly 
into his fate. Covered with wounds, he fell 
once more into the toils of his deadly enemy. 
An awful sound recalled him to momentary 
animation and strength. It was the low dirge 
from the choir of the neighbouring cathedral, 
chanting the funeral obsequies of Elgiva. He 
flew from his dying couch, cast himself with 
delirious ravings on her cold and inanimate 
form, and then, invoking the vengeance of 
heaven on their persecutor, descended with her 
to the grave. 

Incomplete, and therefore inaccurate, as it 

is, this slight abridgment of the tale will show, 
that the dramatic action of “ Edwin the Fair” 
is rather disastrous than tragical. We wit¬ 
ness, indeed, the deadly conflict of thrones, spi¬ 
ritual and temporal. The sceptre falls from a 
feeble grasp, and the crozier is elevated in 
sanguinary triumph. But it is the triumph of 
power over weakness, of craft over simplicity, 
of mature worldly wisdom over childish inex¬ 
perience. An overwhelming calamity befalls 
Edwin and Elgiva, but it is provoked neither 
by any gigantic guilt, nor by any magnani¬ 
mous self-devotion. They perish, the victims 
of imprudence rather than of crime—of a rash 
marriage and a venial inconstancy. This is 
quite probable—quite in accordance with truths 
to be -gathered from the experience of each 
passing day; but for that very reason, it is a 
fable which does not fulfil the laws imposed 
on the stage by ^Eschylus and Shakspeare— 
by their imitators and their critics—or rather 
by reason and nature herself. It does not 
break up our torpid habitual associations. It 
excites no intense sympathy. It gives birth to 
no deep emotion, except, indeed, regret that 
vengeance does not strike down the oppressor. 
There is a failure of poetical justice in the 
progress and in the catastrophe of the drama. 
If it were a passage of authentic history, the 
mind might repose in the conviction that the 
Judge of all must eventually do right. But as 
it is a fiction, it is impossible not to repine 
that right is not actually done. Such unme¬ 
rited disasters and prosperous injustice are, 
we know, consistent with the presence of a 
superintending Deity. But they do not suggest 

it. The handwriting on the wall has no preg¬ 
nant meaning, nor mythic significancy. It is 
not apparently traced by the Divine finger, nor 
has the seer given us any inspired interpreta¬ 
tion. It is one of those legends from which a 
moralist might deduce important lessons of 
prudence, but from which a dramatist could 
hardly evoke a living picture of the destiny of 
man ;—of man opposed and aided by powers 
mightier than his own, engaged in an unequal 
though most momentous conflict, impotent 
even when victorious, and majestic even when 
subdued. 


This objection to the plot of his drama has 
evidently been anticipated by Mr. Taylor him¬ 
self. He summons some dark clouds to gather 
around Dunstan at the moment of his success, 
and dismisses him from our view, oppressed 
by the only domestic sorrow to which his 
heart was accessible, and by omens of ap¬ 
proaching calamity from an inroad of the 
Northmen. Thus the triumph of the wicked 
is tempered, and some endeavour is made to 
gratify, as well as to excite, the thirst for his 
punishment. It is hardly a successful attempt. 
The loss in mature life of an aged mother, is a 
sorrow too familiar and transitory to be ac¬ 
cepted as a retribution for crimes of the deep¬ 
est dye; and war, however disastrous to others, 
has seldom any depressing terrors for the 
rulers of mankind. Besides, there are yet 
some fetters, however light, which chronology 
will throw over the volatile spirit of poetry; 
and it is hard to forget the historical fact, that 
no Danish invasion ever disturbed the tran¬ 
quillity of Dunstan; but that he lived and died 
in that century of repose, for which England 
was indebted to the wisdom and the valour of 
the two great predecessors of Edwin. 

Mr. Taylor has therefore employed another 
and more effectual resource to relieve the in¬ 
herent defects of the subject he has chosen. 
He avails himself of the opportunity it affords 
for the delineation and contrast of characters, 
which he throws off with a careless prodi¬ 
gality, attesting an almost inexhaustible afflu¬ 
ence. In every passage where the interest of 
the story droops, it is sustained by the appear¬ 
ance of some new person of the drama, who is> 
not a mere fiction, but a reality with a fictitious 
name. The stage is not possessed by its ancient 
tenants provided with a new set of speeches, 
but with recruits, who present some of the 
many aspects under which man has actually 
presented himself to a most sagacious and 
diligent observer. This, however, is not true 
of Dunstan, the most conspicuous of all those 
who contribute to the action or to the dialogue. 
He is drawn, not from actual life, but from 
books. In the great drama of society, which 
is acted in our age on the theatre of the civil¬ 
ized world, no part has been, or could be, 
assigned to a spiritual despot, in which to dis¬ 
close freely the propensities and the mysteries 
of his nature. The poet has therefore taken 
the outline from the Anglo-Saxon chroniclers, 
and has supplied the details and the colouring 
from his own imagination. Hence the central 
figure is less congruous—less in harmony 
with itself—than those of the group by which 
it is surrounded; but then it is more ideal, is 
cast in bolder relief, and is thrown off with 
greater force and freedom. 

The real Dunstan, the recluse, the saint, and 
the statesman of the tenth century, had his full 
share of the inconsistencies which distinguish 
man as he is, from man as he is painted. He 
was endowed with all the faculties by which 
great actions are achieved, and with the tem¬ 
perament without which they are never under 
taken. Conversant in his early manhood with 
every science by which social life had then 
been improved, and by every art by which it 
had been embellished, his soul was agitated 




TAYLOR’S EDWIN THE FAIR. 


151 


by ambition and by love. Unprosperous in 
both, his wounded spirit sought relief in soli¬ 
tude and penitential exercises; and an age 
familiar with such prodigies, regarded with 
astonishment and reverence the austerity of 
his self-discipline. When, at length, he emerged 
from the grave, (for in that similitude he had 
dug his cell,) he was supposed by others, and 
probably by himself, to have buried there all 
the tastes and the passions which had once 
enslaved him to the world. But other spirits 
as secular as the first, though assuming a holier 
garb, had entered his bosom, and taken up 
their abode there. All the energies once wasted 
on letters, music, painting, and science, or in 
the vain worship of her to whom his young 
heart had been devoted, were henceforth con¬ 
secrated to the church and to his order. He 
became the foremost champion of sacerdotal 
celibacy and monastic retirement; assumed 
the conduct of the war of the regular against 
the secular clergy; and was the founder of the 
ecclesiastical system which continued for five 
centuries to control all the religious, and to 
affect all the political institutions of his native 
land. 

But the Severn leaping down the rocks of 
Plinlimmon, and the same stream when ex¬ 
panded into a muddy and sluggish estuary, 
does not differ more from itself, than St. Dun- 
stan, the abbot of Glastonbury, from Dunstan 
the metropolitan of the church, and the minis¬ 
ter of the crown of England. During five 
successive reigns, all the powers of the go¬ 
vernment were in his hands, but he ruled in- 
gloriously. When his supreme power had 
once been firmly secured, all the fire and ge¬ 
nius of his earlier days became extinct. With 
the sublime example of Alfred, and the more 
recent glories of Athelstan before his eyes, he 
accomplished nothing and attempted nothing 
for the permanent welfare of his country. No 
one social improvement can be traced to his 
wisdom or munificence. He had none of the 
vast conceptions, and splendid aims, which 
have ennobled the usurpations of so many 
other churchmen. After an undisputed pos¬ 
session of power for forty years’ continuance, 
he left the state enfeebled, and the crown in 
hopeless degradation. To him, more than to 
any man, must be ascribed the ruin of the dy¬ 
nasty under which he flourished, and the inva¬ 
sions which desolated the kingdom during half 
a century from his death. He had command¬ 
ing talents and dauntless courage, but a low, 
narrow, selfish spirit. His place in the Roman 
calendar was justly assigned to him in acknow¬ 
ledgment of his incomparable services to the 
papacy; but he has no station in the calendar 
of the great and good men who, having conse¬ 
crated the noblest gifts of nature and of for¬ 
tune to their proper ends, live for the benefit 
of all generations, and are alike revered and 
celebrated by all. 

The Dunstan of this tragedy is not the lordly 
churchman reposing in the plenitude of suc¬ 
cess, but the fanatic grasping at supreme com¬ 
mand. He is the real hero of “Edwin the 
Fair,” towering over all his associates, and dis¬ 
tinguished from them all by a character, which, 
in the full and proper sense of the term, may 


be pronounced to be dramatic. He is at once 
the victim of religious misanthropy and self¬ 
adoration. He has worshipped the world, has 
been rejected by his idol, and has turned away 
mortified, but not humbled, to meditate holier 
joys, and to seek an eternal recompense. But, 
in the pursuit of these sublime objects, he is 
haunted by the memory of the delights he has 
abandoned, and of the injustice which has ex¬ 
pelled him from the ways and the society of 
mankind. These thoughts distil their bitter¬ 
ness even into his devotions. His social af¬ 
fections droop and wither as their proper 
aliment is withdrawn. His irascible feelings 
deepen, and pass into habits of fixed antipathy 
and moroseness. To feed these gloomy pas¬ 
sions he becomes the calumniator of his spe¬ 
cies, incredulous of human virtue, and astute 
in every uncharitable construction of human 
motives. His malignity establishes a disas¬ 
trous alliance with his disordered piety. He 
ascribes to the Being he adores the foul pas¬ 
sions which fester in his own bosom. His 
personal wrongs are no longer the insignifi¬ 
cant ills of an individual sufferer, nor have 
his personal resentments the meanness of a 
private revenge—for his foes are antagonists 
of the purposes of heaven ; and to crush them 
can be no unacceptable homage to the Su¬ 
preme Arbiter of rewards and punishments. 
With the cold unsocial propensities of a with¬ 
ered heart, disguised from others and from 
himself by the sophistries of a palsied con¬ 
science, Dunstan finds his way back to the 
busy world. He lives among men to satiate 
an ambition such as might be indulged by an 
incarnation of the evil spirit—an ambition ex¬ 
ulting in conscious superiority, and craving 
for the increase and the display of it, but 
spurning and trampling in the dust the vic¬ 
tims over whom it triumphs. Patriotism, loy¬ 
alty, humility, reverence—every passion by 
which man is kind to his brethren—all are 
dead in him; and an intense selfishness, co¬ 
vered by holy pretexts, reigns in undisputed 
sovereignty in his soul. Man is but the worth¬ 
less instrument of his will; and even to his 
Creator he addresses himself with the unawed 
familiarity of a favourite. Proud, icy-cold, and 
remorseless, he wades through guilt sneeringly 
and exultingly—the subject of a strange spirit¬ 
ual disease, compounded of a paralysis of all 
the natural sympathies, and a morbid vigour 
of all the mental energies. This portrait is 
terrible, impressive, and (unhappily) not im¬ 
probable. It labours, however, under one in¬ 
consistency. 

The fanaticism of Dunstan, as delineated in 
this tragedy, is wanting in one essential ele¬ 
ment. He has no profound or deeply cherished 
convictions. He does not believe himself to 
be the selected depositary of divine truth. He 
does not regard dissent from his own opinions 
as criminal; nor does he revel in any vindic¬ 
tive anticipations of the everlasting wo of his 
theological antagonists. He is not clinging to 
any creed which, if rejected by others, may 
elude his own grasp. The enemies of the 
church are indeed his enemies, but they are 
so because they endanger his power, not be¬ 
cause thev disturb the repose or the self-corn- 









152 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


placency of his mind. He has (to borrow the 
distinction of a great writer) the fanaticism of 
the scourge, the brand, and the sword, without 
having the fanaticism of the creed. He is a 
fanatic, without being an enthusiast. His guilt 
is not extenuated by any passionate attach¬ 
ment for truth or sanctity, or for what he be¬ 
lieves to be true and sacred. He rushes into 
oppression, treachery, fraud, and plunder, not 
at the impulse of a disordered imagination, 
but at the bidding of a godless, brotherless 
heart. 

This absence of theological hatred, founded 
on the earnest attachment to some theological 
opinions, impairs both the congruity and the 
terror of Dunstan’s dramatic character. He is 
actuated by no passion intense enough to pro¬ 
voke such enormous guilt; or familiar enough 
to bring him within the range of our sympa¬ 
thies ; or natural enough to suggest, that some 
conceivable shifting of the currents of life 
might hurry us into some plunge as desperate 
as that which we see him making. His homi¬ 
cides are not bloody sacrifices, but villanous 
murders. His scourge is not the thong of 
Dominic, so much as the lash with which 
Sancho (the knave!) imposes on the credulity 
of his master. His impious frauds are not 
oracular deceptions, but the sleight-of-hand 
tricks of a juggler. He is waited on by an 
imp of darkness, who is neither man nor 
fiend; for he perpetrates the foulest crime, 
without malignity, or cupidity, or any other ob¬ 
vious motive. He slaughters Elgiva and Leolf; 
raises his hand to assassinate the king; and, 
at Dunstan’s command, climbs a tree, to howl 
there like the devil; and then enters the cavity 
of the crucifix, to utter a solemn response in 
the person of the Redeemer. 

The objection to this is not the improbabi¬ 
lity, but the revolting hatefulness of the guilt 
which Dunstan and his minister divide be¬ 
tween them. Unhappily it is not historically 
improbable, but the reverse. Sanguinary and 
devious have been the paths along which 
mauy a canonized saint has climbed that ce¬ 
lestial eminence. Tricks, as base and profane 
as that of Dunstan’s crucifix, have been exhi¬ 
bited or encouraged, not merely by the vulgar 
heroes, but by some of the most illustrious 
fathers of the church. But if they violated the 
eternal laws of God, it was to accomplish what 
they devoutly believed to be the divine will. 
Saints and sinners might agree in the means 
to be used, but they differed entirely as to the 
ends to be accomplished. Ambrose, preach¬ 
ing at Milan over the bleeding remains of the 
disinterred martyrs, lent himself to what he 
must have suspected or known to be a lie. 
But the lie was told and exhibited for the con¬ 
futation of the Arians, to which holy object 
Ambrose would as readily have sacrificed his 
life. And though evil done that good may 
come, be evil still—nay, an evil peculiarly 
pestilent and hard to be forgiven—yet there is, 
after all, a wide difference between Bishop 
Bonner and Jonathan Wilde. Devout fanati¬ 
cism, if it may not extenuate, does at least 
sublimate crime. By the intensity of his con¬ 
victions, the greatness of his aims, and the 
energy of his motives, the genuine fanatic I 


places himself beyond the reach of contempt 
of disgust, or of unmixed abhorrence. We 
feel that, by the force of circumstances, the 
noblest of men might be betrayed into such 
illusions, and urged into such guilt as his. 
We acknowledge that, under happy auspices, 
he might have been the benefactor, not the 
curse of his species. We perceive that, if his 
erring judgment could be corrected, he might 
even yet be reclaimed to philanthropy and to 
peace. If we desire that retributive justice 
should overtake him, the aspiration is, that he 
may fall “a victim to the gods,” and not be 
hewed as “a carcass for the hounds.” Not 
such is the vengeance we invoke on the dra¬ 
matic Dunstan and his ministering demon. 
We upbraid the tardiness of human invention, 
which laboured a thousand years in the dis¬ 
covery of the treadmill. Or rather our admi¬ 
ration of the genius which created so noble an 
image of intellectual power, ruthless decision, 
and fearful hardihood, is alloyed by some re¬ 
sentment that the poet should so have marred 
the work of his OAvn hands. How noble a work 
it is will be best understood by listening to the 
soliloquy in which Dunstan communes with 
his own heart, and with his Maker, on the 
commission intrusted to him, and on the spi¬ 
ritual temptations he has to encounter in the 
discharge of it: 

“ Spirit of speculation, rest, oh rest! 

And push not from her place the spirit of prayer! 

God, thou’st given unto me a troubled being— 

So move upon the face thereof, that light 
May be, and be divided from the darkness ! 

Arm thou my soul that I may smite and chase 
The spirit of that darkness, whom not I 
But Thou thro’ me compellest.—Mighty power, 
Legions of piercing thoughts illuminate. 

Hast Thou committed to my large command, 

Weapons of light and radiant shafts of day, 

And steeds that trample on the tumbling clouds. 

But with them it hath pleased Thee to let mingle 
Evil imaginations, corporeal stings, 

A host of imps and Ethiops, dark doubts, 

Suggestions of revolt.—Who is’t that dares V* 

In the same spirit, at once exulting, self- 
exploring, and irreverent, Dunstan bursts out 
in a sort of pcean on his anticipated success, 
as he enters the tower to persuade the abdica¬ 
tion of his sovereign. 

“ Kings shall bow down before thee, said my soul, 

And it is even so. Hail, ancient Hold ! 

Thy chambers are most cheerful, though the light 
Enter not freely; for the eye of God 
Smiles in upon them. Cherish’d by His smile 
My heart is glad within me, and to Him 
Shall testify in works a strenuous joy. 

—Methinks that I could be myself that rock 
Whereon the Church is founded,—wind and flood 
Beating against me, boisterous in vain. 

I thank you, Gracious Powers ! Supernal HostJ 
I thank you that on me, though young in years, 

Ye put the glorious charge to try with fire, 

To winnow and to purge. I hear you call'. 

A radiance and a resonance from Heaven 
Surrounds me, and my soul is breaking forth 
In strength, as did the new-created Sun 
When Earth beheld it first on the fourth day. 

God spake not then more plainly to that orb 
Than to my spirit now. I hear the call. 

My answer, God, and Earth, and Hell shall hear. 

But I could reason with thee, Gracious Power, 

For that thou givest me to perform thy work 
Such sorry instruments.” 

The spirit thus agitated had not always 
been a prey to disquieting thoughts. Dunstan 
had once loved as other men love, and even 
on his seared heart were engraven recollec- 



TAYLOR’S EDWIN THE FAIR. 


153 


lions which revive in all their youthful warmth 
and beauty as he contemplates the agonies of 
his captive king, and tempts him to abdicate 
his crown by the prospect of his reunion to 
Elgiva. 

“ When Satan first 
Attempted me, ’twas in a woman’s shape; 

Such shape as may have erst misled mankind, 

When Greece or Rome uprear’d with Pagan rites 
Temples to Venus, pictured there or carved 
With rounded, polish’d, and exuberant grace. 

And mien whose dimpled changefulness betray’d, 
Thro’ jocund hues, the seriousness of passion. 

I was attempted thus, and Satan sang, 

With female pipe and melodies that thrill’d 
The soften’d soul, of mild voluptuous ease. 

And tender sports that chased the kindling hours 
In odorous gardens or on terraces. 

To music of the fountains and the birds. 

Or else in skirting groves by sunshine smitten. 

Or warm winds kiss’d, whilst we from shine to shade 
Roved unregarded. Yes, ’twas Satan sang, 

Because ’twas sung to me, whom God had call’d 
To other pastime and severer joya. 

But were it not for this, God’s strict behest 
Enjoin’d upon me,—had I not been vow’d 
To holiest service rigorously required, 

I should have owned it for an Angel’s voice, 

Nor ever could an earthly crown, or toys 
And childishness of vain ambition, gauds 
And tinsels of the world, have lured iny heart 
Into the tangle of those mortal cares 
That gather round a throne. What call is thine 
From God or man, what voice within bids thee 
Such pleasures to forego, such cares confront ? 

Dunstan is a superb sophister. Observe 
with what address he reconciles himself to the 
fraud so coarse and degrading as that of 
making his instrument, Gurmo, shake the fo¬ 
rest with dismal howlings, to intimate to the 
passers-by that the hour of fierce conflict be¬ 
tween the saint and the prince of darkness 
had arrived. Contempt of mankind, and of 
his supposed adversary, are skilfully called 
up to still the voice of honour and the remon¬ 
strances of conscience. 

“ And call’st thou this a fraud, thou secular lack-brain? 
Thou loose lay-priest, I tell thee it is none. 

Do I not battle wage in very deed 

With Satan? Yea, and conquer! And who’s he 

Saith falsehood is deliver’d in these howls. 

Which do but to the vulgar ear translate 
Truths else to them ineffable? Where’s Satan? 

His presence, life and kingdom? Not the air 
Nor bowels of the earth, nor central fires 
His habitat exhibits; it is here, 

Here in the heart of Man. And if from hence 
I cast him with discomfiture, that truth 
Is verily of the vulgar sense conceived, 

By utterance symbolic, when they deem 
That, met in bodily oppugnancy, 

I tweak him by the snout. A fair belief 
Wherein the fleshy and the palpable type 
Doth of pure truth substantiate the essence. 

Enough. Come down. The screech-owl from afar 
Upbraids thy usurpations. Cease, I say.” 

It is with admirable truth and insight into 
human character that Dunstan is made to re¬ 
sort to artifices, as various as the occasions 
suggesting them, to evade the expostulations 
with which conscience still tracks him in the 
path of guilt. From scorn of man he passes 
to a kind of adoration of the mystical abstract 
Being, to which, in the absence of more palpa¬ 
ble idols, it is so easy to render an extravagant 
homage. What a labyrinth of gigantic, vague, 
half-conceited images is it into which he 
plunges, in the endeavour to sustain his own 
mind, by contemplating the majesty and the 
holiness of the impersonation in the cause of 
which he is willing to believe himself engaged. 

20 


“ The Church is great, 

Is holy, is ineffably divine ! 

Spiritually seen, and with the eye of faith. 

The body of the Church, lit from within, 

Seems but the luminous phantom of a body; 

The incorporeal spirit is all in all. 

Eternity a parte post et ante 
So drinks the refuse, thins the material fibre 
That lost in ultimate tenuity 
The actual and the mortal lineaments. 

The Church and Time, the meagre, definite, bare. 
Ecclesiastical anatomy, 

The body of this death translates itself, 

And glory upon glory swallowing all 
Makes earth a scarce distinguishable speck 
In universal heaven. Such is the Church 
As seen by faith; but otherwise regarded. 

The body of the Church it search’d in vain 
To find the seat of the soul; for it is nowhere. 

Here are two Bishops, but ’tis not in them.” 

To the dramatic character of Dunstan, the 
antithesis is that of Wulfstan the Wise. An 
idealist arrested in the current of life by the 
eddy of his own thoughts, he muses away his 
existence in one long, though ever-shifting 
dream of labours to be undertaken, and duties 
to be performed. Studious of books, of nature, 
of the heart, and of the ways of man, his intel¬ 
lectual wealth feeds a perennial stream of dis¬ 
course, which, meandering through every field 
of speculation, and in turns enriching all, still 
changes the course it ought to pursue, or 
overflows the banks by which it should be 
confined, as often as any obstacle is opposed 
to its continuous progress. Love, poetry, 
friendship, philosophy, war, politics, morals, 
and manners, each is profoundly contemplated, 
eloquently discussed, and helplessly abandoned, 
by this master of ineffectual wisdom: and yet 
he is an element in society which could be 
worse spared than the shrewdest practical un¬ 
derstanding in the camp or the exchange. His 
wide circuit of meditation has made him ca¬ 
tholic, charitable, and indulgent. In the large 
horizon which his mental eye traverses, he 
discerns such comprehensive analogies, such 
countless indications of the creative goodness, 
and such glorious aspects of beauty and of 
grace, as no narrower ken could embrace, and 
no busier mind combine and harmonize. To 
form such combinations, and to scatter prodi¬ 
gally around him the germs of thought, if hap¬ 
pily they may bear fruit in intellects better 
disciplined, though less opulent than his own, 
is the delight and the real duty of Wulfstan, 
the colloquial. His talk, when listeners are to 
be had, thus becomes a ceaseless exercise of 
kindness; and even when there are none to 
heed him, an imaginary circle still enables 
him to soliloquize most benevolently. In this 
munificent diffusion of his mental treasures, 
the good man is not merely happy, but invul¬ 
nerable ! Let fortune play her antics as she 
will, each shall furnish him with a text; and 
he will embellish all with quaint conceits or 
diagnostic expositions. His daughter steals an 
unworthy match; but he rebounds from the 
shock to moralize on parental disappointment 
and conjugal constancy. He is overborne and 
trampled down by the energy of Dunstan, and 
immediately discovers in his misadventure a 
proof how well the events of his own age are 
adapted for history; and how admirably a re¬ 
tirement to Oxford will enable himself to be¬ 
come the historian. Could Samuel Taylor 














154 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


Coleridge have really thus blossomed in the 
iron age of the Anglo-Saxons 1 It is a hard 
problem. But the efflorescence of his theatri¬ 
cal representative is rendered probable to all 
who ever performed the pilgrimage to the 
Hierophant at Highgate, in the golden era of 
George IV. Never was there a group of audi¬ 
tors better disposed or better able to appreciate 
the wisdom of a sage, than those who are col¬ 
lected round Wulfstan. See with what fine 
discrimination and keen relish his portrait is 
sketched by one of them. 

“ Still 

This life and all that it contains, to him 

Is but a tissue of illuminous dreams 

Fill’d with book wisdom, pictured thought, and love 

That on its own creations spends itself. 

All things he understands, and nothing doe3. 
Profusely eloquent in copious praise 
Of action, he will talk to you as one 
Whose wisdom lay in dealings and transactions; 

Yet so much action as might tie his shoe 
Cannot his will command; himself alone 
By his own wisdom not a jot the gainer. 

Of silence, and the hundred thousand things 
’Tis better not to mention, he will speak, 

And still most wisely—But, behold ! he comes.” 

Leolf, who thus delineates the character of 
Wulfstan, is about to announce to the old man 
the secret marriage of his daughter; and as 
the earl cautiously approaches the unwelcome 
topic, the philosopher finds in each turn of the 
discourse some theme which hurries him away 
to a boundless distance from the matter in 
hand. Obeying the law by which his own 
ideas are associated, but with the tendency ob¬ 
servable in all dreamers, sleeping or waking, 
to reconcile the vision with any suggestion 
from without, he involves himself in an in¬ 
quiry how a man in middle life should wed, 
and on that critical topic thus makes deliver¬ 
ance : 

“Love changes with the changing life of man: 

In its first youth, sufficient to itself, 

Heedless of all beside, it reigns alone, 

Revels or storms, and spends itself in passion. 

In middle age—a garden through whose soil 
The roots of neighbouring forest-trees have crept— 

It strikes on stringy customs bedded deep, 

Perhaps on alien passions; still it grows 
And lacks not force nor freshness: but this age 
Shall aptly choose as answering best its own, 

A love that clings not, nor is exigent, 

Encumbers not the active purposes, 

Nor drains their source; but proffers with free grace 
Pleasure at pleasure touch’d, at pleasure waved 
A washing of the weary traveller’s feet, 

A quenching of his thirst, a sweet repose 
Alternate and preparative, in groves 
Where loving much the flower that loves the shade, 
And loving much the shade that that flower loves, 

He yet is unbewilder’d, unenslaved, 

Thence starting light, and pleasantly let go, 

When serious service calls.” 

Mr. Shandy’s expenditure of eloquence on 
the death of his son, was not more consola¬ 
tory to the bereaved rhetorician, than are the 
disquisitions of Wulfstan on his daughter’s 
undutiful marriage. She must no longer be 
mutable of purpose. She must study the ex¬ 
cellent uses of constancy, and abide in quietude 
of mind. The fickle wind may be her teacher. 
Then, as if himself floating on the wings of 
some soft and balmly gale, the poetical sage 
drowns all his parental anxieties in this light 
and beautiful parable: 

“The wind, when first he rose and went abroad 
Thro’ the vast region, felt himself at fault, 

Wanting a voice; and suddenly to earth 


Descended with a wafture and a swoop, 

Where, wandering volatile from kind to kind, 

He woo’d the several trees to give him one. 

First he besought the ash; the voice she lent 
Fitfully with a free and lashing change 
Flung here and there its sad uncertainties: 

The aspen next; a fluttered frivolous twitter 
Was her sole tribute: from the willow came. 

So long as dainty summer dress’d her out, 

A whispering sweetness, but her winter note 
Was hissing, dry, and reedy: lastly the pine 
Did he solicit, and from her he drew 
A voice so constant, soft, and lowly deep, 

That here he rested, welcoming in her 
A mild memorial of the ocean cave 
Where he was born.” 

The spirit of rumination possesses all the 
persons of this drama. No wonder, then, that 
Leolf feeds on his own thoughts, as best be¬ 
comes a discarded lover. But of that deplor¬ 
able class of mankind, he is a remarkable, if 
not altogether a new variety. He had climbed 
the central arch and in the bridge of life, pain¬ 
fully conscious of the solitude of his heart in 
the midst of the busy crowd, and cherishing a 
vague but earnest desire for deliverance. An 
ideal form, lovely as the day-spring, and ra¬ 
diant with love to him, haunted his path, and 
he lived in the faith that the bright reality 
would at length be disclosed, when his spirit 
should know the blessedness of that union 
which mystically represents to man the design 
and the perfection of his being. She came, or 
seemed to come, in the form of Elgiva—the 
glorious impersonation of that dazzling fan¬ 
tasy—the actual fulfilment of many a dream, 
too fondly courted by his solemn and over¬ 
burdened mind. Nature had made her beau¬ 
tiful, and, even when the maiden’s ruby lips 
were closed, her beaming eye and dimpled 
cheek gave utterance to thoughts, now more 
joyous or impassioned, now more profound or 
holy, than any which could be imparted through 
the coarser vehicle of articulate speech. So 
judged the enamoured interpreter of that fair 
tablet—mistaking for emanations of her mind 
the glowing hues reflected by the brilliant sur¬ 
face from his own. He threw over the object 
of his homage all the most rich and graceful 
draperies stored in the wardrobe of his own 
pensive imagination; unconsciously worship¬ 
ped the creature of his own fancy; and adorned 
her with a diadem which, though visible to 
him alone, had for a true heart a greater value 
than the proudest crown which could be shared 
with kings. 

Such was not Elgiva’s judgment. Her ear 
drank in the flatteries of Edwin; nor had he 
long to sue for the hand which had been 
plighted to the champion and defender of his 
throne. A ready vengeance was in the grasp 
of Leolf. One word from him would have 
sealed the doom of his successful rival. But 
no such words passed his lips. In his solitude 
he probes the incurable wound which had 
blighted all the hopes, and dispelled all the 
illusions of life. He broods with melancholy 
intentness over the bleak prospect, and drains 
to the dregs the bitter cup of irremediable deso¬ 
lation. But in his noble spirit there is no place 
for scorn, resentment, or reproach. His duty, 
though it be to protect with his life the authors 
of his wretchedness, is performed in the true 
spirit of duty;—quietly, earnest^ and without 




TAYLOR’S EDWIN THE FAIR. 


155 


vaunt or ostentation. He has sympathy to 
spare for the sorrows of others, while demand¬ 
ing none for his own. He extenuates with 
judicial rectitude and calmness Elgiva’s infi¬ 
delity to himself, and loyally dies to restore 
her to the arms of her husband. 

Leolf is the portrait of a man in whose mind 
justice, in the largest conception of the word, 
exercises an undisputed sway; — silencing, 
though it cannot assuage, the deepest sorrow, 
representing all the importunities of self-love, 
restraining every severe and uncharitable cen¬ 
sure, and exciting the faithful, though unre¬ 
quited, discharge of all the obligations of loy¬ 
alty, and love, and honour. The world in 
which we live abounds in models, which may 
have suggested, by the power of contrast, this 
image of a statesman and a soldier. Haughty 
self-assertion is not merely pardoned in our 
public men, but takes its place among their 
conventional virtues. We are accustomed to 
extol that exquisite sensitiveness which avenges 
every wrong, and repels every indignity, even 
though the welfare of our common country be 
the sacrifice. To appreciate the majesty of a 
mind which, in the most conspicuous stations 
of life, surrenders itself to the guidance of per¬ 
fect equity—and of humility, the offspring of 
equity; which has mastered resentment and 
pride as completely as all the baser passions— 
we must turn from the real to the mimetic 
theatre, and study man not as he actually is, 
in camps and parliaments, but as he is here 
exhibited on the stage. 

Relieved from attendance on his feeble sove¬ 
reign and faithless queen, Leolf (a great solilo¬ 
quist) lakes his stand on the sea-shore, and 
thus gives utterance to the thoughts which 
disappointment had awakened in his melan¬ 
choly, though well-balanced mind: 

“ Rocks that beheld my boyhood ! Perilous shelf 
That nursed my infant courage ! Once again 
I stand before yon—not as in other days 
In your gray faces smiling—but like you 
The worse for weather. Here again I stand, 

Again, and on the solitary shore 
Old ocean plays as on an instrument, 

Making that ancient music, when not known? 

That ancient music only not so old 
As He who parted ocean from dry land 
And saw that it was good. Upon my ear, 

As in the season of susceptive youth. 

The mellow murmur falls—but finds the sense 
Dull’d by distemper; shall I say—by time? 

Enough in action has my life been spent 
Through the past decade, to rebate the edge 
Of early sensibility. The sun 
Rides high, and on the thoroughfares of life 
I find myself a man in middle age, 

Busy and hard to please. The sun shall soon 
Dip westerly,—but oh ! how little like 
Are life’s two twilights! Would the last were first 
And the first last! that so we might be soothed 
Upon the thoroughfares of busy life 
Beneath the noon day sun, with hope of joy 
Fresh as the morn,— with hope of breaking lights, 
Illuminated mists, and spangled lawns. 

And woodland orisons, and unfolding flowers, 

As things in expectation.—Weak of faith! 

Is not the course of earthly outlook, thus 
Reversed from Hope, an argument to Hope 
That she was licensed to the heart of man 
For other than for earthly contemplations, 

In that observatory domiciled 
For survey of the stars ?” 

It is in his last interview with Elgiva that 
the character of Leolf is best exhibited. He 
has rescued her from captivity, and, during a 


transient pause in her flight with him to Edwin, 
the inconstant queen expresses her gratitude, 
and suggests her contrition. It is a scene of 
pathos and dignity which we should rejoice to 
transfer into our pages, but which would be 
impaired by abridgment, and is too long for 
quotation as it stands. 

If Leolf is the example of the magnanimous 
endurance of the ills of life, Athulf, his friend 
and brother soldier, is the portrait of a man 
born to encounter and to baffle them. It is 
drawn with the elaborate care, and touched 
and retouched with the parental fondness with 
which authors cherish, and sometimes ener¬ 
vate, their favoured progeny. Unfortunately, 
Athulf is surrounded by a throng of dramatic 
persons, who afford him no sufficient space 
for action or for speech. We become ac¬ 
quainted with him chiefly by observing the 
impression he leaves on the minds of his asso¬ 
ciates, his enemies, and his friends. Wulfstan 
the Wise is one of these; and he will describe 
Athulf with a warmth and vigour which it is 
impossible to emulate, although it must be ad¬ 
mitted to be not inconsiderably abstruse—an 
infirmity to which the good Wulfstan is greatly 
addicted. 

“Much mirth he hath, and yet less mirth than fancy. 
His is that nature of humanity 
Which both ways doth redound, rejoicing now 
With soarings of the soul, anon brought low : 

For such the law that rules the larger spirits. 

This soul of man, this elemental crisis, 

Completed, should present the universe 
Abounding in all kinds; and unto all 
One law is common,—that their act and reach 
Stretch’d to the farthest is resilient ever, 

And in resilience hath its plenary force. 

Against the gust remitting fiercelier burns 
The fire, than with the gust it burnt before. 

The richest mirth, the richest sadness too, 

Stands from a groundwork of its opposite; 

For these extremes upon the way to meet 
Take a wide sweep of Nature, gathering in 
Harvests of sundry seasons.” 

With Duustan, Leolf, Wulfstan, and Athulf* 
are associated a rich variety of other charac¬ 
ters—some elaborately, some slightly, sketched 
—and some exhibited in that rapid outline 
which is designed to suggest, rather than to 
portray the image which occupies the poet’s 
fancy. There is Odo, the archbishop, the sport 
of the winds and currents, into which this vic¬ 
tim of dignity and circumstances is passively 
borne—a sort of rouge dragon , or clarencieux 
king-at-arms, hurried by some misadventure 
in feats of real chivalry, with nothing but 
tabard and mantle to oppose to the sharp 
sword and heavy battle-axe;—and Clarenbald, 
by office a lord chancellor, a pompous patron¬ 
izing appendage of royalty, who, in an age of 
war and treason, and amidst the clash of arms, 
is no better than a kind of master of the cere¬ 
monies in the Aula Regia ;—and Ruold, a hair¬ 
brained gallant, whom the frown of a polished 
brow, or the smile of a dimpled cheek, will 
mould to the fair one’s purposes, though faith, 
life, and honour should be the forfeit:—and 
Edwin himself, the slave in turn of every pas¬ 
sion which assails him, love, anger, despon¬ 
dency, impatience, and revenge, ever wasting 
his energies to no purpose, and playing the 
fool with the indefeasible dignity of him who 
at once wears and worships an hereditary 








156 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS. 


crown; and Elgiva, the storm-compelling 
beauty, who sets a world in flames, and who 
has proceeded from the hands of her dramatic 
creator with a character entirely neutral and 
unformed; in order that all may ascribe to her 
such fascinations as may best explain to each 
the mystery of her influence over the weak 
and the wise, the feeble and the resolute;— 
and Emma, a damsel whose virtue (for she is 
virtuous and good, and firm of heart) is but 
little indebted to her discretion; for the maiden 
is possessed by the spirit of intrigue and inter¬ 
meddling, and, at his bidding, assumes by 
turns the disguises of a wife, of a strolling 
minstrel, and of a priest, to disentangle the 
webs which she has spun; and there are mili¬ 
tary leaders and ecclesiastics, fortune-tellers, 
and scholars, jesters, swineherds, and forest¬ 
ers—to each of whom is assigned some share 
in the dialogue or in the plot—which glows 
like the firmament with stars of every magni¬ 
tude, clustering into constellations of endless 
variety. 

This crowding of the scene at once con¬ 
duces to the beauty, and impairs the interest 
of this drama. If our arithmetic fail us not, 
there appear on the stage not fewer than fifty 
interlocutors, who jostle and cross each other— 
impede the development of the fable, and leave 
on the mind of the reader, or of the spectator, 
all impression at once indistinct and fatiguing. 
It is not till after a second or a third perusal, 
that the narrative or succession of events 
emerges distinctly from the throng of the 
doings and the sayings. But each successive 
return to this drama brings to light, with a 
still increasing brilliancy, the exquisite struc¬ 
ture of the verse, the manly vigour of thought, 
and the deep wisdom to which it gives most 
musical utterance; the cordial sympathy of 
the poet with all that is to be loved and re¬ 
vered in our common nature, and his no less 
generous antipathy for all that debases and 
corrupts it; his sagacious and varied insight 
into the chambers of imagery in the human 
heart; and the all-controlling and faultless 
taste which makes him intuitively conscious 
of the limits which separate the beautiful 
from the false, the extravagant, and the af¬ 
fected. 

A great writer is his own most formidable 
rival. If “Edwin the Fair,” shall fail of due 
acceptance, it will be more to “Philip Van 
Artevelde” than to any other hostile critic that 
such ill success will be really owing. Mr. 
Taylor has erected a standard by which he 
must be measured and judged. The sect of 
the Takersdown is a large and active frater¬ 
nity, among whom there are never wanting 
some to speak of powers impaired, and of ex¬ 
hausted resources. Untrue, in fact, as such a 
censure would be, it would not be quite desti¬ 
tute of plausibility. “Philip Van Artevelde” 
has a deeper and more concentrated interest 
than “ Edwin the Fair.” It approaches far 
more nearly to the true character of tragedy. 
Virtues, hazardous in their growth, majestic 
in their triumph, and venerable even in the 
fall, shed a glory round the hero, with which 
the guilt and the impunity of Dunstan form a 
painful contrast. The scene of the play, more¬ 


over, is more warm and genial, and the versi¬ 
fication flows more easily, and in closer resem¬ 
blance to the numerous prose of Massinger 
and of Fletcher. There is also less of the uni¬ 
formity which may be observed in the style 
of “Edwin,” where churchmen, laics, and 
ladies, are all members of one family, and 
have all the family failing, of talking philoso¬ 
phy. The idle king himself moralizes not a 
little; and even the rough huntsman pauses to 
compare the fawning of his dogs with the flat¬ 
teries of the court. But if the earlier work be 
the greater drama, the latter is assuredly the 
greater poem. More abundant mental resources 
of every kind are there—knowledge more com¬ 
prehensive—an imagination at once more 
prompt and more discursive—the ear tuned to 
a keener sense of harmony—the points of 
contact and sympathy with the world multi¬ 
plied—and the visible traces of that kind influ¬ 
ence which passing years have obviously shed 
on a mind always replete with energy and 
courage, but which has not, till now, given 
proof that it was informed in an equal degree 
by charity, benevolence, and compassion. 

It is, indeed, rather as a poet than as a dra¬ 
matist that Mr. Taylor claims the suffrage of 
those with whom it rests to confer the high 
reward of his labours. In a memorable essay, 
prefixed to his former tragedy, he explained 
and vindicated, not his dramatic but his poeti¬ 
cal creed, and then, as now, proceeded to illus¬ 
trate his own doctrines. To the credit of 
having discovered any latent truth, or of hav¬ 
ing unfolded any new theory of the sublime 
art he pursues, he, of course, made no preten¬ 
sion. It would have been utterly at variance 
with the robust sense which is impressed on 
every page he writes. His object was to refute 
a swarm of popular sectarians, by proclaim¬ 
ing anew the ancient and Catholic faith. As 
the first postulate of his argument, he laid it 
down, that if a man would write well, either 
with rhythm or without it, behooved him to 
have something to say. From this elementary 
truth, he proceeded to the more abstruse and 
questionable tenet, that “ no man can be a 
very great poet who is not also a great philo¬ 
sopher.” 

To what muse the highest honour is justly 
due, and what exercises of the poetic faculty 
ought to command, in the highest degree, the 
reverence of mankind, are problems not to be 
resolved without an inquiry into various recon¬ 
dite principles. But it is a far less obscure 
question what is the poetry which men do 
really love, ponder, commit to memory, incor¬ 
porate into the mass of their habitual thoughts, 
digest as texts, or cherish as anodynes. This 
is a matter of fact, which Paternoster Row, if 
endowed with speech, could best determine. 
It would be brought to a decision, if some lite¬ 
rary deluge (in the shape, for example, of a 
prohibitory book-tax) should sweep over the 
land—consigning to the abyss our whole poeti¬ 
cal patrimony, and all the treasures of verse 
accumulated in our own generation. In that 
frightful catastrophe, who are tne poets whom 
pious hands would be stretched out to save 1 
The philosophical! They would sink un¬ 
heeded, with Lucretius at tneir head. Or the 



TAYLOR’S EDWIN THE FAIR. 


157 


allegorical? The waves would close unresist¬ 
ingly over them, though the Faery Queen her¬ 
self should be submerged. Or the descriptive? 
Windsor Forest and Grongar Hill would dis¬ 
appear, with whole galleries of inferior paint¬ 
ings. Or the witty ? In such a tempest even 
Hudibras would not be rich enough to attract 
the zeal of the Salvors. Or the moral ? Es¬ 
says on man, with an infinite variety of the 
“ pleasures” of man’s intellectual faculties, 
would sink unwept in the vast whirlpool. 
There, too, would perish, Lucan, with a long 
line of heroic cantos, romances in verse, and 
rhymes—amorous, fantastic, and bacchana¬ 
lian. But, at whatever cost or hazard, leaves 
would be snatched, in that universal wreck, 
from the digressions and interstitial passages 
of the three great epics of Greece, Italy, and 
England. The bursts of exultation and agony 
in the “ Agamemnon” would be rescued; with 
some of the anthologies, and a few of the odes 
of Anacreon and Horace. There would be a 
sacred emulation to save, from the all-absorb¬ 
ing flood, “L’Allegro” and “II Penseroso;” 
with the “Odes and Fables of Dryden,” 
“ Henry and Emma,” the “Rape of the Lock,” 
and “ the Epistle to AbelardGray’s Bard,” 
and “Elegy,” Lord Lyttleton’s “Monody,” 
“The Traveller,” “The Deserted Village,” 
and “The Task,” Mr. Campbell’s Shorter 
Poems, and some of Mr. Wordsworth’s Son¬ 
nets ; while the very spirit of martyrdom 
would be roused for the preservation of 
Burns, and the whole Shakspearian theatre; 
ballads and old songs out of number; much 
devotional psalmody, and, far above all the 
rest, the inspired songs of the sweet singer of 
Israel. 

No man, says Dr. Johnson, is a hypocrite m 
his pleasures. At school we learn by heart 
the De Arte Poetica. At college we are lec¬ 
tured in the poetics. Launched into the wide 
world, we criticise or write, as it may happen, 
essays on the sublime and beautiful. But on 
the lonely sea-shore, or river-bank, or in the 
evening circle of family faces, or when the 
hearth glows on the silent chamber round 
which a man has ranged the chosen compa¬ 
nions of his solitary hours, with which of them 
does he really hold the most frequent and 
grateful intercourse? Is it not with those 
who best give utterance to his own feelings, 
whether gay or mournful; or who best enable 
him to express the otherwise undefinable emo¬ 
tions of the passing hour? Philosophy is the 
high privilege of a few, but the affections are 
the birthright of all. It was an old complaint, 
that when wisdom lifted up her voice in the 
streets, none would regard it; but when was 
the genuine voice of passion ever unheeded? 
It is the universal language. It is the speech 
intelligible to every human being, though 
spoken, with any approach to perfection, by 
that little company alone, who are from time 
to time inspired to reveal man to himself, and 
to sustain and multiply the bonds of the uni¬ 
versal brotherhood. It is a language of such 
power as to reject the aid of ornament, fulfil¬ 
ling its object best when it least strains and 
taxes the merely intellectual faculties. The 


poets, whom men secretly worship, are distin¬ 
guished from the rest, not only by the art of 
ennobling common subjects ; but by the rarer 
gift of imparting beauty to common thoughts, 
interest to common feelings, and dignity to 
common speech. True genius of this order 
can never be vulgar, and can, therefore, afford 
to be homely. It can never be trite, and can, 
therefore, pass along the beaten paths. 

What philosophy is there in the wail of Cas¬ 
sandra? in the last dialogue of Hector and 
Andromache ? in Gray’s “ Elegy ?” or in the 
Address to “ Mary in Heaven ?” And yet 
when did philosophy ever appeal to mankind 
in a voice equally profound? About four- 
and-twenty years ago Mr. Wolfe established a 
great and permanent reputation by half a 
dozen stanzas. Almost as many centuries 
have passed since the great poetess of Greece 
effected a similar triumph with as small an, 
expenditure of words. Was Mr. Wolfe a phi¬ 
losopher, or was Sappho ? They were simply 
poets, who could set the indelible impress of 
genius on what all the world had been feeling 
and saying before. They knew how to appro¬ 
priate for ever to themselves a combination 
of thoughts and feelings, which, except in the 
combination, have not a trace of novelty, nor 
the slightest claim to be regarded as original. 
In shorter terms, they knew how to write heart 
language. 

A large proportion of the material of which 
the poetry of David, ^Eschylus, Homer, and 
Shakspeare is composed, if presented for use 
to many of our greatest writers in its un¬ 
wrought and unfashioned state, would infalli¬ 
bly be rejected as common-place, and un¬ 
worthy of all regard. Our poets must now be 
philosophers; as Burke has taught all our 
prose writers, and most of our prosaic speak¬ 
ers to be, at least in effort and desire. Hence 
it is that so large a part of poetry which is 
now published is received as worthy of all 
admiration, but not of much love—is praised 
in society, and laid aside in solitude—is re¬ 
warded by an undisputed celebrity, but not 
by any heartfelt homage—is heard as the dis¬ 
course of a superior, but not as the voice of a 
brother. 

The diligent students and cultivated ad¬ 
mirers of poetry will assign to the author of 
“ Edwin the Fair” a rank second to none of 
the competitors for the laurel in his own 
generation. They will celebrate the rich and 
complex harmony of his metre, the masculine 
force of his understanding, the wide range of 
his survey of life and manners, and the pro¬ 
fusion with which he can afford to lavish 
his intellectual resources. The mere lovers 
of his art will complain, that in the conscious¬ 
ness of his own mental wealth, he forgets 
the prevailing poverty; that he levies too 
severe a tribute of attention, and exacts from 
a thoughtless world meditations more deep, 
and abstractions more prolonged, than they 
are able or willing to command. Right or 
wrong, it is but as the solace of the cares, 
and as an escape frorfi the lassitude of life, 
that most men surrender their minds to the 
fascination of poetry; and they are not dis^ 







158 


STEPHEN’S MISCELLANEOUS WHITINGS. 


posed to obey the summons to arduous think¬ 
ing, though proceeding from a stage resplen¬ 
dent with picturesque forms, and resounding 
with the most varied harmonies. They will 
admit that the author of “Edwin the Fair,” 
can both judge as a philosopher, and feel as 
a poet; but will wish that his poetry had been 


less philosophical, or his philosophy less po¬ 
etical. It is a wish which will be seconded 
by those who revere his wisdom, and delight 
in his genius; and who, therefore, regret to 
anticipate that his labours will hardly be 
rewarded by an early or an extensive popu¬ 
larity. 





























































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